Inspired by people losing their mind over dp[mask][-1] here...

Motivation

Sometimes you need to implement an array with negative indices. For example you may want to have an array dp[i] which stores values for all $$$i$$$, $$$-10^5 \le i \le 10^5$$$. One way is to make dp an (unordered) map. But this is slow and can get TLE in certain problems. Another way is this:

const int MAX_N = 2e5 + 20;
const int ZERO = 1e5 + 5;
int dp [MAX_N];

and instead of calling dp[i] you call dp[ZERO + i]. If I want to access dp[-5] for example, I access dp[ZERO - 5]. But this is tedious and error-prone. It's very easy to make a mistake by forgetting to write ZERO somewhere.

The solution

Do the above, but do it like this!

const int MAX_N = 2e5 + 20;
const int ZERO = 1e5 + 5;
int dp_ [MAX_N];

int& dp (int idx) { // the '&' is very important!
  return dp_[ZERO + idx];
}

A very important part is that dp doesn't return an int; it returns an int& — a reference to the given position in the array. This means that it's very convenient to use. We can assign to dp(i), modify dp(i) etc.

int main () {
  int main () {
  dp(-300) = 7;
  dp(40) = 5;
  dp(-300) += 777; // All of those are fine!
  cout << dp(40) << " " << dp(-300) << endl;
  
  swap(dp(40), dp(-300)); // Even this works!
  cout << dp(40) << " " << dp(-300) << endl;
}