C++ Programming Resources

C++ Programming Resources

Here is a collection of annotated references and web-page links, together with a bit of introductory material of my own, on the general topic of the C++ programming language.

Table of Contents:

Link to my web page on C programming.
Link to my web page on numerical programming.
Link back to my home page.

Introduction

To quote from Bjarne Stroustrup's web page on C++,

C++ is a general purpose programming language with a bias towards systems programming that

C++ is a powerful and sophisticated language. For the skilled programmer, it can be used to tackle large and complicated projects much more effectively, and at a much higher level of abstraction (i.e. being bothered by much less extraneous detail) than (say) C or Fortran.

However, by virtue of the very (desirable) features which make it so powerful, C++ is also a large and complicated language, and it's not easy for a beginner to learn C++ in its full complexity. Fortunately, one can work usefully in C++ knowing only a small subset of the language, consisting essentially of C (modulo a few minor exceptions, C++ is in fact a superset of C), together with a small number of new features. One can then gradually learn further more-sophisticated features of C++ as the opportunity and/or need arises.

However, C++ still shares C's basic philosophy of assuming the programmer knows what s/he is doing. C++ does provide considerably more protection against some common mistakes than C does, but at the same time C++'s (much) greater power makes it all the more dangerous if misused. That is, it's painfully easy for a minor mistake in a C++ program to result in (say) a program which appears to work ok, but is far less efficient than it should be, will give wierd errors if you later try to modify the code in certain ways, or just crashes with confusing and hard-to-diagnose symptoms.

Compilers

I recommend the GNU Project's GNU Compiler Collection, commonly known as gcc. This is an excellent compiler which actually handles C, C++, Fortran, Java, Chill, Ada, and maybe also some other languages I don't remember right now. gcc is much closer to the official C/C++ language standards than Microsoft's compilers, for example. [In fact Microsoft's compilers are notorious for egregious violations of the language standards -- Microsoft's business model doesn't call for making it easy for their users to switch to other vendors. :( ]

You can download a GCC source distribution from the GCC web pages. If you're using a Unix-flavored computer system and you have at least a little computer background, this is the best way to get an up-to-date compiler. (Since gcc is written in C, you'll need some existing C compiler (just about any one will do) to bootstrap the process. But that shouldn't be a problem -- most Unix-flavored systems already come with a C compiler, or if not you should be able to find binaries of some older gcc version somewhere on the net.)

If you're stuck with Microsoft Windows in any of its incarnations, there are a couple of different GCC ports available, which you can download as binary distributions. Two good ones are

If You've Never Programmed Before...

Steve Heller, Who's afraid of C++?
(Addison-Wesley / AP Professional, 1996, ISBN 0-12-339097-4)
(The full text is also available online.)
I haven't personally seen this book, but it comes recommended by the comp.lang.c++ Frequently Asked Questions List as a good C++ book if you don't know any other programming language. It's also recommended by Eric S. Raymond in The Linux Reading List HOWTO's section on Books on C and C++ Programming.

The University of Cambridge Department of Engineering's C++ Web Site has links to several good online tutorials (and lots of other good stuff, too).

Basic Stuff

Stanley B. Lippman and Josée Lajoie, C++ Primer, 3rd Edition
(Addison-Wesley, 1998, ISBN 0-201-82470-1)
This is an excellent book from which to learn C++: it starts at the beginning, and winds up covering just about all of the language. It's fully up-to-date with respect to the ANSI/ISO C standard. It assumes you're already familiar with basic block-structured programming concepts, but it does not assume you already know C. If you're only going to buy one C++ book, and you want to become fully fluent in the language, this should be your book. Unfortunately, because it covers all of C++, this book is pretty big (1200+ pages).

Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo, Accelerated C++
(Addison-Wesley, 2000, ISBN 0-201-70353-X)
This is a beginners' C++ book with a difference -- it focuses on using the STL (standard template library) from the beginning. Unlike Lippman and Lajoie, it deliberately covers only a subset of the language. The payoff is in size/length -- unlike books which cover all of C++, this book is relatively short and lightweight.

Stanley B. Lippman, Essential C++
(Addison-Wesley, 2000, ISBN 0-201-48518-4)
This is a fairly short beginners' C++ book -- a bit under 300 pages, which only covers the most commonly used language features. Its presentation is fairly standard -- it doesn't have the heavy STL emphasis of Koenig and Moo. It's "just" an excellent introduction to C++. (If you know Perl, you could think of this book as sort of like the Llama book.)

The comp.lang.c++ Frequently Asked Questions List, available from sites in USA (1), USA (2), USA (3), Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Spain, and Taiwan.
This is Marshall Cline's superb Frequently-Asked-Questions list for the comp.lang.c++ Usenet newsgroup. It covers a lot of frequently-confused topics in C++, both elementary and more advanced, and I recommend that anyone doing nontrivial C++ programming at least skim through it, and preferably take the time to read through it in detail. An expanded form of this FAQ is available in book form.

Marshall P. Cline and Greg A. Lomow, C++ FAQs
(Addison-Wesley, 1995, ISBN 0-201-58958-3)
This is a very nice book containing about 470 short questions and answers on C++, covering at lot of the common traps and pitfalls. Even though it's almost a decade ago, it's still very good reading! The comp.lang.c++ Frequently Asked Questions List is a condensed and hyperlinked version of this book's contents, but there's enough extra detail in the book that I think the book is well worth buying even after you've worked through the online FAQ.

C++ Web Site from University of Cambridge's Department of Engineering
Lots of good C++ resources here, including a large section on learning C++ (which in turn includes links to several online tutorials).

C++ Annotations
This is an online introduction to C++ for C programmers.

An Introduction to C++ for C Programmers
This is a 2-part pedagogical talk I gave to the AEI numerical relativity group in August 2004:

C++ Style and Usage

Because C++ offers such a wide range of features, matters of style and Usage, i.e. of deciding which C++ features to use in a given situation, and just how to use them, are much more important in C++ than in less powerful or more narrowly focused languages.

Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ Style and Technique FAQ
This is a nice short FAQ on C++ style & techniques issues, by the language designer himself.

The comp.lang.c++ Frequently-Asked-Questions List and the expanded C++ FAQs book both have a lot of material on C++ style and usage.

These are a superb book/CD-ROM series. The books are in question-and-answer form, with around 50 or so questions/answers of a few pages each. Both beginners and experts can learn a lot from these books! In fact, whichever book you learn C++ from, I recommend that these books be your next C++ book purchases after the C++ FAQs book.

Cargill, C++ Programming Style
This book is getting a bit old by now, but it's still excellent. Each chapter starts with a complete example C++ program taken from some other C++ text, then critiques it and rewrites it to be easier to understand and modify, more efficient, more portable, etc etc. I found this book a lot of fun to read!

Bjarne Stroustrup's Advice on How to Learn C++
Stroustrup was the designer/inventor and original implementor of C++. This is a message he posted to the comp.lang.c++ Usenet newsgroup way back in 1993 or so, offering his advice for how one should go about learning C++.

Intermediate to Advanced Stuff

Bjarne Stroustrup, The C++ Programming Language, 3rd Edition
(Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-88954-4)
This is the granddaddy of all C++ books (Stroustrup was the inventor/designer of C++). It's very clearly written, and it covers all of C++ in reasonable detail. I think it's a beautiful treatment of the language for the programmer who's already fully fluent in C or a similar language. But it's big, covers a lot of material, and it's not easy reading for the beginner. Alas, its table of contents is just about useless -- it lists only chapter titles, not sections, subsections, subsubsections, etc. Stroustrup offers an expanded table of contents on his web page, listing all the sections, subsections, etc, but this is still awful -- it omits almost all page numbers!.

Bjarne Stroustrup, The Design and Evolution of C++
(Addison-Wesley, 1994, ISBN 0-201-54330-3)
This book is about why various features of C++ are the way they are. For the intermediate to advanced C++ programmer, there's a lot of insight here.

Andrew Koenig and Barbara Moo, Ruminations on C++
(Addison-Wesley, 1997, ISBN 0-201-42339-1)
This is another book of columns, this time ones by Koenig in Journal of Object-Oriented Programming, C++ Journal, and C++ Report. Again, they've been expanded and rewritten for the book.

Herb Sutter's web site and his books

These books are similar in character to Scott Meyers' Effective C++ series, but at a higher level. Sutter's widely-acclaimed Guru of the Week series from the comp.lang.c++.moderated newsgroup form the basis of this book, but he's extensively revised and expanded them for the book.

Bjarne Stroustrup's Web Page on the C++ Programming Language
Bjarne Stroustrup's Home Page
Stroustrup was the designer/inventor and original implementor of C++. His web site has links to lots and lots of C++ information, along with a few other goodies.

Carlos Moreno's STL Tutorial
Mumit Khan's STL Tutorial (unfortunately quite out of date)
Here are two online introductory tutorials on the C++ STL. Unfortunately, Moreno is a bit carefree in his use of namespaces. :(

C/C++ Users Journal's C++ Experts Forum
These are a series of monthly columns by the former columnists of C++ Report (now defunct). The columns are excellent and very readable.

Dinkumware's Standard C++ Library online documentation: detailed, hyperlinked, documentation for the C++ Standard Template Library (STL).

Comeau Computing's Tech Talk about C++ and C
This is a very good C++/C frequently-asked-questions list by one of one of the main C++ compiler vendors. They also have an excellent Templates FAQ.

Boost.org is a web site for exchanging peer-reviewed C++ (source code) libraries. The emphasis is on libraries which interoperate well with the STL, and share its design philosophy. Boost has some peculiar licensing restrictions (it forbids GNU GPLed or other ``open source'' libraries), but there's some useful code available.

My Web Page on Calling Fortran Subroutines from C
A lot of excellent numerical software is written in Fortran, so it's often useful to use this software (i.e. to call Fortran subroutines and/or functions) from C and/or C++ programs. This is a web page I wrote on how to do this (C only, not C++), as well as how to write C functions which can be called from Fortran code. Everything on this page is valid for C++ as well as C; sometime soon I'll revise it to also cover "specifically for C++" techniques.

Sean Corfield's C++ Beyond the ARM Web Pages
This is a nice web site devoted to explaining recent changes/additions to C++, i.e. things which you might not (yet) find in C++ books.

The Mozilla C++ Portability Guide
Some ugly guidelines on what C++ features to avoid if you want your code to be portable to even the most archaic and buggy of compilers. Fortunately, most compilers are now starting to converge on the ANSI/ISO C++ standard. (Microsoft's compilers are the main exception, alas.)

Dietmar Kühl's C++ Page
This includes several array classes (even an arbitrary-dimensional one using fancy recursive templates). However, note that the C++ standard draft and GCC information here is many years out of date.

Matthew H. Austern, Generic Programming and the STL
(Addison-Wesley, 1999, ISBN 0-201-30956-4)
As well as standardizing the C++ language, the ANSI/ISO C++ standards committees also standardized a large and sophisticated standard template library, commonly known as the STL. Because it's new, and because it's heavily based on templates, most older C++ books don't cover the STL. Austern was one of the principle authors of SGI's implementation of the STL, and his book offers an in-depth treatment of the STL.

Link back to Jonathan Thornburg's home page.
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