Book Image

Beginning C++ Programming

By : Richard Grimes

Book Image

Beginning C++ Programming

By: Richard Grimes

Overview of this book

C++ has come a long way and is now adopted in several contexts. Its key strengths are its software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications, servers, and performance-critical applications, not to forget its importance in game programming. Despite its strengths in these areas, beginners usually tend to shy away from learning the language because of its steep learning curve. The main mission of this book is to make you familiar and comfortable with C++. You will finish the book not only being able to write your own code, but more importantly, you will be able to read other projects. It is only by being able to read others' code that you will progress from a beginner to an advanced programmer. This book is the first step in that progression. The first task is to familiarize you with the structure of C++ projects so you will know how to start reading a project. Next, you will be able to identify the main structures in the language, functions, and classes, and feel confident being able to identify the execution flow through the code. You will then become aware of the facilities of the standard library and be able to determine whether you need to write a routine yourself, or use an existing routine in the standard library. Throughout the book, there is a big emphasis on memory and pointers. You will understand memory usage, allocation, and access, and be able to write code that does not leak memory. Finally, you will learn about C++ classes and get an introduction to object orientation and polymorphism.

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Reader feedback

Customer support

Free Chapter

Starting with C++

Starting with C++

What will you find in this chapter?

Installing Visual C++

Examining C++ projects

Writing a simple project

Understanding Language Features

Understanding Language Features

Using operators

Controlling execution flow

Using C++ language features

Exploring C++ Types

Exploring C++ Types

Exploring built-in types

Converting between types

Using C++ types

Working with Memory, Arrays, and Pointers

Working with Memory, Arrays, and Pointers

Using memory in C++

Using pointers in C++

Allocating memory in code

Memory and the C++ Standard Library

Using pointers in practice

Using Functions

Using Functions

Defining C++ functions

Using function parameters

Function features

Designing functions

Function pointers

Templated functions

Overloaded operators

Using functions in C++

Classes

Writing classes

Using objects with pointers

Introduction to Object-Orientated Programming

Introduction to Object-Orientated Programming

Inheritance and composition

Introducing polymorphism

Using polymorphism

Using the Standard Library Containers

Using the Standard Library Containers

Working with pairs and tuples

Using the numeric libraries

Using the Standard Library

Using Strings

Using the string class as a container

Internationalization

Strings and numbers

Using stream classes

Using regular expressions

Diagnostics and Debugging

Diagnostics and Debugging

Preparing your code

Application termination

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What is C++?

The predecessor of C++ is C, which was designed by Dennis Richie at Bell Labs and first released in 1973. C is a widely used language and was used to write the early versions of Unix and Windows. Indeed, the libraries and software-development libraries of many operating systems are still written to have C interfaces. C is powerful because it can be used to write code that is compiled to a compact form, it uses a static type system (so the compiler does the work of type checking), and the types and structures of the language allow for direct memory access to computer architecture.

C, however, is procedural and based on functions, and although it has record types (struct) to encapsulate data, it does not have object-like behaviors to act on that encapsulated state. Clearly there was a need for the power of C but the flexibility and extensibility of object-oriented classes: a language that was C, with classes. In 1983, Bjarne Stroustrup released C++. The ++ comes from the C increment operator ++.

Strictly, when postfixed to a variable, the ++ operator means increment the variable, but return the variable's value before it was incremented. So the C statements int c = 1; int d = c++; will result in variable d having a value of 1 and variable c having a value of 2. This does not quite express the idea that C++ is an increment on C.