C++26: Reflection, Memory Safety, Contracts, and a New Async Model

4 hours ago

C++26 standard draft is finalized, introducing reflection, memory safety improvements, contracts, and a unified concurrency framework.
Reflection allows C++ to describe itself and generate code at compile-time with no runtime overhead, simplifying future language evolution.
Memory safety enhancements automatically eliminate undefined behavior with uninitialized variables and provide bounds safety for standard library types.
Contracts add preconditions and postconditions, plus a native assertion mechanism, with four handling options: ignore, observe, enforce, and quick enforce.
std::execution framework introduces schedulers, senders, and receivers for structured concurrency, designed to be data-race-free and work with coroutines.
Features have been tested in production at Apple and Google, fixing over 1,000 bugs and reducing segfault rates without major code rewrites.
GCC and Clang compilers have already implemented most C++26 features, with mainline releases coming soon.

Hasty Briefsbeta