kstd-core

A collection of common types to plug holes in pre-C++20 versions. This library provides the following things:

• kstd::Box for encapsulating references as pointers
• kstd::NonZero for integers and pointers
• kstd::Option as a std::optional replacement with reference support and NonZero optimizations
• kstd::OutPtr as suggested by C++26
• kstd::Pack for emulating first-class type support of parameter packs
• kstd::RelativePtr for defining relative pointers
• kstd::Result result type with support for void and references
• kstd::Slice as a pre-C++20 replacement for std::span
• kstd::SourceLocation as a pre-C++20 replacement for std::source_location
• kstd::Tuple as a replacement for std::tuple with support for references and easy concatination
• kstd::Void type for denoting empty states in std::variant and as a dummy type
• kstd::StaticVector as an option for a lightweight small vector implementation.
• kstd::transmute function as a replacement for std::bitcast
• Cross-platform unicode conversion API with support for UTF-8/16/32
• Safe allocation API which wraps around new/make_unique/make_shared and provides results
• Non-IO-stream print API based on {fmt}
• Copy/move implementation macros for default/delete implementation
• Hash API for hashing more than one value and for combining hashes
• Readable macro definitions for detecting the C++ version (C++11/14/17/20/23)
• Type-safe cross-platform wrapper for the C standard library
• Rust-like type definitions for cstdint types and atomics (i8, f32 etc.)
• Assertions with source locations (source traces)
• Bitflag types (enum classes with bitwise operators using macros)

STL interoperability

kstd-core provides tight integration with C++'s builtin STL to turn kstd-core's specialized types into drop-in replacements for their std-counterparts.

• kstd::Result supports bidirectional conversion from/to std::expected in C++23 and up
• kstd::Option supports bidirectional conversion from/to std::optional in C++20 and up
• kstd::Slice supports bidirectional conversion from/to std::span in C++20 and up
• kstd::Tuple supports bidirectional conversion from/to std::tuple

Testing

In order to build kstd-core with unit tests, you can simply use CMake as follows after cloning the repository:

cmake -S . -B cmake-build-debug -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug -DKSTD_CORE_BUILD_TESTS=ON
cmake --build cmake-build-debug

This will produce an executable kstd-core-tests(.exe) inside of the cmake-build-debug directory. You can directly run this to invoke the Google Test suite.