Unit IV — Overview: Templates, Exceptions, Streams & Files

Unit IV completes the C++ toolkit with three modern features:

1. Parametric polymorphism / Generic programming via templates
2. Exception handling — modern error-handling mechanism
3. Streams and Files — C++'s I/O model

Learning outcomes

After Unit IV you should be able to:

• Write function templates and class templates
• Handle template specialisation and overloading
• Use try/catch/throw for exceptions
• Catch specific types, catch all (...), rethrow exceptions
• Specify exception declarations (throw(), noexcept)
• Use the C++ stream hierarchy (istream, ostream, fstream)
• Open, read, write, close files
• Handle file modes (text vs binary; sequential vs random access)
• Use file pointers (seekg, tellg, seekp, tellp)
• Implement persistent objects + command-line arguments

Topic map

Chapter mapping (IPU)

• TB1 (Venugopal): Chapters 16, 17, 18, 19
• TB2 (Balagurusamy): Chapters 11, 12, 13

Typical exam weight

Unit IV contributes 2-3 long questions:

• Explain function templates with example. — 12.5 marks
• Explain class templates with example. — 12.5 marks
• What is exception handling? Explain try/catch/throw with example. — 12.5 marks (very high)
• Write a C++ program to read/write a file. — 12.5 marks
• Explain file pointers and random access in files. — 12.5 marks