- Preface
- CASE 01 — The Vanishing Bytes
- CASE 02 — Off the Number Line
- CASE 03 — The Index That Wrapped
- CASE 04 — The Optimizer's Alibi
- CASE 05 — Two Views of a Corpse
- CASE 06 — The Lost Increment
- CASE 07 — Published Too Soon
- CASE 08 — The Comparator Who Lied
- CASE 09 — A Reference to a Ghost
- CASE 10 — Half a Witness
- Appendix A — The Forensic Toolkit
- Appendix B — The Case Index
C++ AUTOPSY
Ten Investigations into Code that Compiled, Ran, and Lied
This book is 100% completeLast updated on 2026-06-27
Ten C++ investigations into programs that compiled clean, ran perfectly, and still got the answer wrong. A forensic journey through the bugs that hide in plain sight.
Minimum price
$6.00
$6.00
You pay
Author earns
PDF
About
About the Book
Every bug in this book passed the compiler. Every bug ran to completion. Every bug returned exit code zero. None of them told the truth.
Most C++ books teach you how to write code. This one teaches you how to investigate it.
C++ Autopsy presents ten forensic investigations into programs that appear perfectly healthy: they compile cleanly, execute normally, and quietly produce the wrong result. No syntax errors. No crashes. No obvious clues. Just evidence waiting to be examined.
Each case unfolds like a real investigation. You begin at the crime scene with a minimal, reproducible program. You examine the evidence, question the suspects—including one deliberate red herring—inspect real diagnostic output from professional tools, identify the true cause, and verify the fix. Every conclusion is backed by the C++ standard, compiler behavior, or observable runtime evidence.
Along the way, you'll uncover some of the language's most deceptive pitfalls: undefined behavior, lifetime errors, memory corruption, concurrency bugs, numerical surprises, optimizer assumptions, and subtle violations of the Standard Library's contracts. Some cases are caught immediately by modern tools. Others pass every warning, every sanitizer, and every test—exactly the kinds of defects that reach production.
Whether you write systems software, libraries, game engines, or high-performance applications, this book will change the way you debug C++. Instead of asking, "Why did my program crash?" you'll learn to ask the more dangerous question:
Why did it appear to work?
For intermediate and advanced C++ developers. Every example compiles with C++20. Every case is real. Every verdict is earned.
Bundle
Bundles that include this book
- Pricing
$40.00
Minimum priceBought separately$56.00Suggested price$40.00
Author
About the Author
Hatem M.
Hatem M. is a programmer and technical author whose work focuses on modern C++, large language models, and AI systems.
His books combine first-principles explanations with complete implementations and reproducible experiments. They include C++ Algorithmic Mastery, an eight-volume series on algorithms and problem solving; Build an LLM Inference Engine in C++, which constructs a GPT-style inference engine from scratch; LLM Quantization: From the Bits Up, which develops the theory and practice of neural network quantization from the bit level upward; and C++ Autopsy, a forensic investigation of ten subtle C++ bugs that compiled successfully, ran correctly, and still produced the wrong answers.
Contents
Table of Contents
Get the free sample chapters
Click the buttons to get the free sample in PDF or EPUB, or read the sample online here
The Leanpub 60 Day 100% Happiness Guarantee
Within 60 days of purchase you can get a 100% refund on any Leanpub purchase, in two clicks.
See full terms...
Earn $8 on a $10 Purchase, and $16 on a $20 Purchase
We pay 80% royalties on purchases of $7.99 or more, and 80% royalties minus a 50 cent flat fee on purchases between $0.99 and $7.98. You earn $8 on a $10 sale, and $16 on a $20 sale. So, if we sell 5000 non-refunded copies of your book for $20, you'll earn $80,000.
(Yes, some authors have already earned much more than that on Leanpub.)
In fact, authors have earned over $15 million writing, publishing and selling on Leanpub.
Learn more about writing on Leanpub
Free Updates. DRM Free.
If you buy a Leanpub book, you get free updates for as long as the author updates the book! Many authors use Leanpub to publish their books in-progress, while they are writing them. All readers get free updates, regardless of when they bought the book or how much they paid (including free).
Most Leanpub books are available in PDF (for computers) and EPUB (for phones, tablets and Kindle). The formats that a book includes are shown at the top right corner of this page.
Finally, Leanpub books don't have any DRM copy-protection nonsense, so you can easily read them on any supported device.
Learn more about Leanpub's ebook formats and where to read them
Write and Publish on Leanpub
You can use Leanpub to easily write, publish and sell in-progress and completed ebooks and online courses!
Leanpub is a powerful platform for serious authors, combining a simple, elegant writing and publishing workflow with a store focused on selling in-progress ebooks.
Leanpub is a magical typewriter for authors: just write in plain text, and to publish your ebook, just click a button. (Or, if you are producing your ebook your own way, you can even upload your own PDF and/or EPUB files and then publish with one click!) It really is that easy.