C++ High Performance

Resource acquisition and the rule of three

Now that you have a handle on what is going on, let's go into detail.

To fully understand move semantics, we need to go back to the basics of classes and resource acquisition in C++. One of the basic concepts of classes and resource acquisition in C++ is that a class should completely handle its resources.

This means that when a class is copied, assigned, or destructed, the class should make sure its resources are also copied, assigned and destructed. The necessity of implementing these three functions is commonly referred to as the rule of three.

The rule of three is such an obvious part of C++ and STL that there is a chance that you are using it without thinking about it. But if we take a look ...