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C++ Academy · Lesson

Hiding Implementation with PIMPL

Hide implementation details behind a pointer-to-implementation idiom.

The PIMPL Idiom

PIMPL = "Pointer to IMPLementation." Move the class s private data to a separate impl struct, accessed via a pointer.

Why PIMPL?

Benefits:

  • Hide implementation details from headers
  • Reduce compile-time dependencies
  • Maintain ABI stability when adding private members
  • Allow swapping implementations

All lessons in this course

  1. Header-Only vs Compiled Libraries
  2. API Versioning and ABI Stability
  3. Hiding Implementation with PIMPL
  4. Writing a Modern Header-Only Utility Library
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