Programming Mafia

C++ FAQ's

int main() {
 if (ansisupported(0)) cout << "ANSI OK";
 return 0;
}
</code>
 
<dl><dd>If your compiler is able to compile this program, you will be able to compile most of the existing ANSI-C++ code.</dd>
<dt>How can I make windowed programs?</dt>
<dd>You need a C++ compiler and linker that can generate code for your 
windowing environment (Windows, XWindow, MacOS, ...). Windowed programs 
do not generally use the console to communicate with the user. They use a
 set of functions or classes to manipulate windows instead, which are 
specific to each environment. Anyway, the same principles apply both for
 console and windowed programs, except for communicating with the user.</dd>
<dt>What is Visual C++? And what does "visual programming" mean?</dt>
<dd>Visual C++ is the name of a C++ compiler with an integrated 
environment from Microsoft. It includes special tools that simplify the 
development of large applications as well as specific libraries that 
improve productivity. The use of these tools is generally known as 
visual programming. Other manufacturers also develop these types of 
tools and libraries, like Borland C++, Visual Age, etc...</dd></dl>
</dd></dl>
</div>

C++ FAQ's

What is C++? C++ is a programming language. It literally means "increased C", reflecting its nature as an evolution of the ...

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History of C++

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The C++ programming language has a history going back to 1979, when <a href="http://www2.research.att.com/%7Ebs/">Bjarne Stroustrup</a>
 was doing work for his Ph.D. thesis. One of the languages Stroustrup 
had the opportunity to work with was a language called Simula, which as 
the name implies is a language primarily designed for simulations. <a href="http://staff.um.edu.mt/jskl1/talk.html">The Simula 67 language</a>
 - which was the variant that Stroustrup worked with - is regarded as 
the first language to support the object-oriented programming paradigm. 
Stroustrup found that this paradigm was very useful for software 
development, however the Simula language was far too slow for practical 
use. 
 
Shortly thereafter, he began work on "C with Classes", which as the name
 implies was meant to be a superset of the C language. His goal was to 
add object-oriented programming into the C language, which was and still
 is a language well-respected for its portability without sacrificing 
speed or low-level functionality. His language included classes, basic inheritance, inlining, default function arguments, and strong type checking in addition to all the features of the C language. 
 
The first C with Classes compiler was called Cfront, which was derived 
from a C compiler called CPre. It was a program designed to translate C 
with Classes code to ordinary C. A rather interesting point worth noting
 is that Cfront was written mostly in C with Classes, making it a 
self-hosting compiler (a compiler that can compile itself). Cfront would
 later be abandoned in 1993 after it became difficult to integrate new 
features into it, namely C++ exceptions. Nonetheless, Cfront made a huge impact on the implementations of future compilers and on the Unix operating system. 
 
In 1983, the name of the language was changed from C with Classes to 
C++. The ++ operator in the C language is an operator for incrementing a
 variable, which gives some insight into how Stroustrup regarded the 
language. Many new features were added around this time, the most 
notable of which are virtual functions, function overloading,
 references with the & symbol, the const keyword, and single-line 
comments using two forward slashes (which is a feature taken from the 
language BCPL). 
 
In 1985, Stroustrup's reference to the language entitled The C++ Programming Language
 was published. That same year, C++ was implemented as a commercial 
product. The language was not officially standardized yet, making the 
book a very important reference. The language was updated again in 1989 
to include protected and static members, as well as inheritance from 
several classes. 
 
In 1990, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual was released. The 
same year, Borland's Turbo C++ compiler would be released as a 
commercial product. Turbo C++ added a plethora of additional libraries 
which would have a considerable impact on C++'s development. Although 
Turbo C++'s last stable release was in 2006, the compiler is still 
widely used. 
 
In 1998, the C++ standards committee published the first international standard for <a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=25845">C++ ISO/IEC 14882:1998</a>, which would be informally known as C++98. The Annotated C++ Reference Manual was said to be a large influence in the development of the standard. The Standard Template Library,
 which began its conceptual development in 1979, was also included. In 
2003, the committee responded to multiple problems that were reported 
with their 1998 standard, and revised it accordingly. The changed 
language was dubbed <a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=38110">C++03</a>. 
 
In 2005, the C++ standards committee released a technical report (dubbed
 TR1) detailing various features they were planning to add to the latest
 C++ standard. The new standard was informally dubbed C++0x as it was 
expected to be released sometime before the end of the first decade. 
Ironically, however, the new standard would not be released until 
mid-2011. Several technical reports were released up until then, and 
some compilers began adding experimental support for the new features. 
 
In mid-2011, <a href="http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=50372">the new C++ standard</a> (dubbed C++11) was finished. The <a href="http://www.boost.org/">Boost library project</a>
 made a considerable impact on the new standard, and some of the new 
modules were derived directly from the corresponding Boost libraries. 
Some of the new features included regular expression support (details on
 regular expressions may be found <a href="http://www.regular-expressions.info/">here</a>),
 a comprehensive randomization library, a new C++ time library, atomic support, a standard threading library (which up until 2011 both C and 
C++ were lacking), a new for loop
 syntax providing functionality similar to foreach loops in certain 
other languages, the auto keyword, new container classes, better support
 for unions and array-initialization lists, and variance templates. 
</div>

History of C++

The C++ programming language has a history going back to 1979, when Bjarne Stroustrup was doing work for his Ph.D. thesis. One of t...

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C++ Brief Description

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<h2>
Preface</h2>
Computers are some of the most versatile tools that we have available. 
They are capable of performing stunning feats of computation, they allow
 information to be exchanged easily regardless of their physical 
location, they simplify many every-day tasks, and they allow us to 
automate many processes that would be tedious or boring to perform 
otherwise. However, computers are not "intelligent" as we are. They have
 to be told in no uncertain terms exactly what they're supposed to do, 
and their native languages are quite unlike anything we speak. Thus, 
there's a formidable language barrier between a person who wishes a 
computer to do something, and the computer that typically requires 
instructions in its native language, machine code, to do anything. So 
far, computers cannot figure out what they are supposed to do on their 
own, and thus they rely on programs which we create, which are sets of instructions that the computer can understand and follow. 
 
<h2 id="overview">
An Overview of Programs and Programming Languages</h2>
In order to better communicate to our computers what exactly it is we want them to do, we've developed a wide range of programming languages to make the communication process easier. 
 
Depending on the type of project, there are many factors that have to be
 considered when choosing a language. Here is a list of some of the more
 noteworthy ones: 
<ul>
<li id="cij">Compiled, interpreted, or JIT-compiled Compiled languages
 are translated to the target machine's native language by a program 
called a compiler. This can result in very fast code, especially if the 
compiler is effective at optimizing, however the resulting code may not 
port well across operating systems and the compilation process may take a
 while. Interpreted languages are read by a program called 
an interpreter and are executed by that program. While they are as 
portable as their interpreter and have no long compile times, 
interpreted languages are usually much slower than an equivalent compiled program. Finally, just-in-time compiled
 (or JIT-compiled) languages are languages that are quickly compiled 
when programs written in them need to be run (usually with very little 
optimization), offering a balance between performance and portability. 
 </li>
<li id="level">High or Low Level
Level, in this case, refers to how much the nature of the language 
reflects the underlying system. In other words, a programming language's
 level refers to how similar the language is to a computer's native 
language. The higher the level, the less similar it is. 
A low-level language is generally quite similar to machine code, 
and thus is more suitable for programs like device drivers or very high 
performance programs that really need access to the hardware. Generally,
 the term is reserved for machine code itself and assembly languages, 
though many languages offer low-level elements. Since a low-level 
language is subject to all the nuances of the hardware it's accessing, 
however, a program written in a low-level language is generally 
difficult to port to other platforms. Low level languages are 
practically never interpreted, as this generally defeats the purpose. 
A high-level language focuses more on concepts that are easy to 
understand by the human mind, such as objects or mathematical functions.
 A high-level language usually is easier to understand than a low-level 
language, and it usually takes less time to develop a program in a 
high-level language than it does in a low-level language. As a trade-off
 one generally needs to sacrifice some degree of control over what the 
resulting program actually does. It is not, however, impossible to mix 
high-level and low-level functionality in a language. 
 </li>
<li id="types">Type System A type system refers
 to the rules that the different types of variables of a language have 
to follow. Some languages (including most assembly languages) do not 
have types and thus this section does not apply to them. However, as 
most languages (including C++) have types, this information is 
important. 
 <ul>
<li> Type Strength: Strong or Weak A strong typing system 
puts restrictions on how different types of variables can be converted 
to each other without any converting statements. An ideal strong typing 
system would forbid implicit "casts" to types that do not make any 
sense, such as an integer to a Fruit object. A weak typing system would 
try to find some way to make the cast work. 
 </li>
<li> Type Expression: Manifest or Inferred This deals
 with how the compiler/interpreter for a language infers the types of 
variables. Many languages require variables' types to be explicitly 
defined, and thus rely on manifest typing. Some however, will infer the 
type of the variable based on the contexts in which it is used, and thus
 use inferred typing. 
 </li>
<li> Type Checking: Static or Dynamic If a language 
is statically typed, then the compiler/interpreter does the type 
checking once before the program runs/is compiled. If the language is 
dynamically type checked, then the types are checked at run-time. 
 </li>
<li> Type Safety: Safe or Unsafe These refer to the 
degree to which a language will prohibit operations on typed variables 
that might lead to undefined behavior or errors. A safe language will do
 more to ensure that such operations or conversions do not occur, while 
an unsafe language will give more responsibility to the user in this 
regard. 
 </li>
</ul>
 
 These typing characteristics are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and some languages mix them. 
 </li>
<li id="paradigms">Supported paradigms A programming 
paradigm is a methodology or way of programming that a programming 
language supports. Here is a summary of a few common paradigms: 
 <ul>
<li> Declarative A declarative language will focus more on
 specifying what a language is supposed to accomplish rather than by 
what means it is supposed to accomplish it. Such a paradigm might be 
used to avoid undesired side-effects resulting from having to write 
one's own code. 
 </li>
<li> Functional Functional programming is a subset of
 declarative programming that tries to express problems in terms of 
mathematical equations and functions. It goes out of its way to avoid 
the concepts of states and mutable variables which are common in 
imperative languages. 
 </li>
<li> Generic Generic programming focuses on writing 
skeleton algorithms in terms of types that will be specified when the 
algorithm is actually used, thus allowing some leniency to programmers 
who wish to avoid strict strong typing rules. It can be a very powerful 
paradigm if well-implemented. 
 </li>
<li> Imperative Imperative languages allow 
programmers to give the computer ordered lists of instructions without 
necessarily having to explicitly state the task. It can be thought of 
being the opposite of declarative programming. 
 </li>
<li> Structured Structured programming languages aim 
to provide some form of noteworthy structure to a language, such as 
intuitive control over the order in which statements are executed (if X 
then do Y otherwise do Z, do X while Y is Z). Such languages generally 
deprecate "jumps", such as those provided by the goto statement in C and
 C++. 
 </li>
<li> Procedural Although it is sometimes used as a 
synonym for imperative programming, a procedural programming language 
can also refer to an imperative structured programming language which 
supports the concept of procedures and subroutines (also known as 
functions in C or C++). 
 </li>
<li> Object-Oriented Object-Oriented programming 
(sometimes abbreviated to OOP) is a subset of structured programming 
which expresses programs in the terms of "objects", which are meant to 
model objects in the real world. Such a paradigm allows code to be 
reused in remarkable ways and is meant to be easy to understand. 
 </li>
</ul>
</li>
<li>Standardization Does a language have a formal 
standard? This can be very important to ensure that programs written to 
work with one compiler/interpreter will work with another. Some 
languages are standardized by the American National Standards Institute 
(ANSI), some are standardized by the International Organization for 
Standardization (ISO), and some have an informal but de-facto standard 
not maintained by any standards organization. 
</li>
</ul>
 
<h2 id="features">
The Features of C++ as a Language</h2>
Now that all the necessary theory has been covered, now it is possible 
to explain what C++ has to offer as a programming language. C++... 
<ul>
<li>...is an open ISO-standardized language. For a time, C++
 had no official standard and was maintained by a de-facto standard, 
however since 1998, C++ is standardized by a committee of the ISO. Their
 page may be accessed <a href="http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/">here</a>. 
 </li>
<li> ...is a compiled language. C++ compiles directly to a machine's native code, allowing it to be one of the fastest languages in the world, if optimized. 
 </li>
<li> ...is a strongly-typed unsafe language. C++ is a 
language that expects the programmer to know what he or she is doing, 
but allows for incredible amounts of control as a result. 
 </li>
<li> ...supports both manifest and inferred typing. As 
of the latest C++ standard, C++ supports both manifest and inferred 
typing, allowing flexibility and a means of avoiding verbosity where 
desired. 
 </li>
<li> ...supports both static and dynamic type checking. C++
 allows type conversions to be checked either at compile-time or at 
run-time, again offering another degree of flexibility. Most C++ type 
checking is, however, static. 
 </li>
<li> ...offers many paradigm choices. C++ offers 
remarkable support for procedural, generic, and object-oriented 
programming paradigms, with many other paradigms being possible as well.
 
 </li>
<li> ...is portable. As one of the most frequently used languages in the world and as an open language, C++ has a wide range of <a href="http://www2.research.att.com/%7Ebs/compilers.html">compilers</a>
 that run on many different platforms that support it. Code that 
exclusively uses C++'s standard library will run on many platforms with 
few to no changes. 
 </li>
<li> ...is upwards compatible with C C++, being a 
language that directly builds off C, is compatible with almost all C 
code. C++ can use C libraries with few to no modifications of the 
libraries' code. 
 </li>
<li> ...has incredible library support. A search for "library" on the popular project-management website <a href="http://www.sourceforge.net/">SourceForge</a> will yield over 3000 results for C++ libraries. A link to the results of the search may be found <a href="http://sourceforge.net/directory/language:C%2B%2B/?q=library">here</a>.</li>
</ul>
<pre class="prettyprint notranslate tryit prettyprinted" style="cursor: default;"></pre>
</div>

C++ Brief Description

Preface Computers are some of the most versatile tools that we have available. They are capable of performing stunning feats of comp...

+ Read more »