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.
Table of Contents (11 chapters)

Using C++ language features

Let's now use the features you have learned in this chapter to write an application. This example is a simple command-line calculator; you type an expression such as 6 * 7, and the application parses the input and performs the calculation.

Start Visual C++ and click the File menu, and then New, and finally, click on the File... option to get the New File dialog. In the left-hand pane, click on Visual C++, and in the middle pane, click on C++ File (.cpp), and then click on the Open button. Before you do anything else, save this file. Using a Visual C++ console (a command line, which has the Visual C++ environment), navigate to the Beginning_C++ folder you created in the previous chapter and create a new folder called Chapter_02. Now, in Visual C++, on the File menu, click Save Source1.cpp As... and in the Save File As dialog locate the Chapter_02...