Ray Lischner - C++ In a Nutshell

Copyright 2009 O'Reilly Media, Inc.

This book is divided into two interleaved sections that cover the language and the library, and a section of appendixes. Roughly speaking, the language is the part of C++ that does not require any additional #include headers or files. The library is the part of C++ that is declared in the standard headers.

is a reference for the preprocessor.

present an overview of the library and introduce the topics that span individual headers.

Sometimes, information is duplicated, especially in . My goal has been to present information when you need it, where you need it. I tried to balance the need for a single, clear, complete description of each language feature with the desire to reduce the number of cross references you must chase before you can understand that language feature.

Here are more detailed descriptions of each chapter.

describes the basic rules for the C++ language: character sets, tokens, literals, and so on.

describes how objects, types, and namespaces are declared and how names are looked up.

describes operators, precedence, and type casts.

describes all the C++ statements.

describes function declarations and definitions, overload resolution, argument passing, and related topics.

describes classes (and unions and structures), members, virtual functions, inheritance, accessibility, and multiple inheritance.

describes class and function template declarations, definitions, instantiations, specializations, and how templates are used.

introduces the standard library and discusses some overarching topics, such as traits and allocators.

introduces the I/O portion of the standard library. Topics include formatted and unformatted I/O, stream buffers, and manipulators.

introduces the suite of container class templates, their iterators, and generic algorithms. This is the portion of the library that has traditionally been called the Standard Template Library (STL).

is an alphabetical reference for the preprocessor, which is part of the language, but with a distinct set of syntactic and semantic rules.

is an alphabetical reference for the language and grammar. Backus-Naur Form (BNF) syntax descriptions are given for each keyword and other language elements, with pointers to the first seven chapters for the main reference material.

is a reference for the entire standard library, organized alphabetically by header, and alphabetically by name within each header section.

describes ways that some compilers extend the language: to satisfy customer need, to meet platform-specific requirements, and so on.

).

The defines some words and phrases used throughout this book and in the C++ community.

Whenever possible, the examples in this book are complete, compilable programs. You can tell which examples fall into this category because they start with #include directives and contain a main( ) function. You can download these examples as text files from the book's web site at http://www.tempest-sw.com/cpp/ or from O'Reilly's catalog page for this book: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/cplsian/.

Most examples are shortened to eliminate excess code that might interfere with the clarity of the example. In particular, these examples are fragments that lack a main function. Sometimes, an ellipsis indicates missing code, such as a function body. In other cases, the omissions are clear from the context. Most abbreviated examples have complete and compilable versions available for download.

All of the examples have been checked with several different compilers, including Comeau Computing's compiler with the Dinkumware standard library (widely acknowledged as the most complete and correct implementations of the C++ standard). Not all compilers can compile all the examples due to limitations and bugs in the compilers and libraries. For best results, try to work with the latest version of your compiler. Recent releases of several major compilers have made dramatic progress toward conformance with the standard. When possible, I have tried to alter the example files to work around the bugs without interfering with the intent of the example.

I have checked all the examples with the following compilers:

This book uses the following conventions: