C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

43. Pimpl judiciously

Summary

Overcome the language’s separation anxiety: C++ makes private members inaccessible, but not invisible. Where the benefits warrant it, consider making private members truly invisible using the Pimpl idiom to implement compiler firewalls and increase information hiding. (See Items 11 and 41.)

Discussion

When it makes sense to create a “compiler firewall” that completely insulates calling code from a class’s private parts, use the Pimpl idiom: Hide them behind an opaque pointer (a pointer, preferably an appropriate smart pointer, to a class that is declared but not yet defined). For example:

The eponymous Pimpl should ...