This book is an excellent start for the professional programmer who wants to master C++ for use in an object-oriented environment. No knowledge of C is required. The author completes instruction in C++ in the first four chapters before moving on to a demonstration of its outstanding contributions to object-oriented methodology.
PREFACE
This book is intended as an introduction to object-oriented programming(OOP) using ANSI C++ for the reader or student who already has programmingexperience. It explains C++ features in the context of OOP.
C++ has had many recent additions including STL, namespaces, RTTI, and thebool type. These can be used readily by someone already proficient in basicC++, but most books have yet to treat these topics. This book can provide ahandy guide to these new constructs.
The examples both within the book, and accessible at Addison-Wesley's website are intended to exhibit good programming style. The Addison-Wesley website, aw for this book contains the programs in the book as well asadjunct programs that illustrate points made in the book, or that flesh outshort pieces of programs. The programs available at the web site areintroduced by their .cpp or .h names.
C++, invented at Bell Labs by Bjarne Stroustrup in the mid-1980s, is apowerful modern successor language to C. C++ adds to C the concept ofclass, a mechanism for providing user-defined types also calledabstract data types. It supports object-oriented programming by thesemeans and by providing inheritance and run-time type binding.
By carefully developing working C++ programs, using the method ofdissection, this book presents a simple and thorough introduction to theprogramming process in C++. Dissection is a technique for explaining newelements in a program that the student is seeing for the first time. Ithighlights key points in the many examples of working code that are used toteach by example.
This book is intended for use in a first course in programming in C++. Itcan be used as a supplementary text in an advanced programming course, datastructures course, software methodology course, comparative language course,or other courses where the instructor wants C++ to be the language of choice.Each chapter presents a number of carefully explained programs. Many programsand functions are dissected.
All the major pieces of code were tested. A consistent and proper codingstyle is adopted from the beginning. The style standard used is one chosen byprofessionals in the C++ community.
In conjunction with A Book on C, Third Edition by Al Kelley and IraPohl (Addison Wesley Longman, 1995), an integrated treatment of the Cand C++ programming languages and their use are presented which are notavailable elsewhere. For the beginner, a simpler introduction to the Clanguage is C by Dissection: The Essentials of C Programming, ThirdEdition by Al Kelley and Ira Pohl (Addison Wesley Longman, 1995).Chapters contain:
Object-Oriented Concept: Explains how an object-orientedprogramming concept is supported by a language feature.
Working Code: Small examples of working code illustrateconcepts. Code illustrates a language feature or an OOP concept.
Dissections: A program particularly illustrative of thechapter's themes is analyzed by dissection. Dissection is similar to astructured walk-through of the code. Its intention is to explain to the readernewly encountered programming elements and idioms.
Pragmatics: Tips, pitfalls, nuances, and advice on thetopic.
Summary: A succinct list of points are reiterated ashelpful chapter review.
Exercises: The exercises test the student's knowledge ofthe language. Many exercises are intended to be done interactively whilereading the text. This encourages self-paced instruction by the reader. Theexercises also frequently extend the reader's knowledge to an advanced area ofuse.The book incorporates:
Object-Oriented Programming. Object-Orientation isstressed throughout. Chapter 1, "Why Object-Oriented Programming in C++?,"provides an introduction to C++'s use as an object-oriented programminglanguage. Chapter 2, "Native Types and Statements," shows data types,expressions, and simple statements. Chapter 3, "Functions and Pointers,"continues with similarities between functions and complex data types. The middle chapters show how classes work. Classes are the basis for abstract datatypes and object-oriented programming. The last few chapters give advanceddetails of the use of inheritance, templates, and exceptions. Chapter 12, "OOPUsing C++," discusses OOP and the Platonic programming philosophy. Thisbook develops in the programmer an appreciation of this point of view. At anypoint in the text the programmer can stop and use the new material.
Teaching by Example. This book is a tutorial that stressesexamples of working code. From the start the student is introduced to fullworking programs. An interactive environment is assumed. Exercises areintegrated with the examples to encourage experimentation. Excessive detail isavoided in explaining the larger elements of writing working code. Eachchapter has several important example programs. Major elements of theseprograms are explained by dissection.
Data Structures in C++. The text emphasizes many of thestandard data structures from computer science. Stacks, safe arrays,dynamically allocated multidimensional arrays, lists, trees, and strings areall implemented. Exercises extend the student's understanding of how toimplement and use these structures. Implementation is consistent with anabstract data type approach to software.
Standard Template Library (STL). STL is explained and usedin Chapter 9, "Templates, Generic Programming, and STL." Many of the datastructure examples foreshadow its explanation and use. There is a strongemphasis on the template mechanism required for STL and the iterator idiomthat STL exploits.
ANSI C++ language and iostream.h. For an existing,widely used language, C++ continues to change at a rapid pace. This book isbased on the most recent standard: the ANSI C++ Committee language documents.A succinct informal language reference is provided in Appendix C, "LanguageGuide." Chief additions include templates and exception handling. The examplesuse the iostream.h I/O library. This has replaced stdio.h usedin the C community. Use of the iostream.h library is described inAppendix D, "Input/Output."
Reference Value in Appendices. There is an easilyaccessible informal language reference appendix: Appendix C, "Language Guide."Though this is not official, it specifies the language definition in a tersemanner. There is also an appendix on the key I/O libraries, iostream.hand stream.h: Appendix D, "Input/Output." A short guide to both thestring library and STL is given in Appendix E, "STL and StringLibraries."
Idiomatic and Mainstream. The book attempts to stay withmainstream aspects of the language that are most important for the student andprofessional. It avoids arcane features of the language that are error proneor confusing. It is idiomatic in its use of code. The code is readily copiedand reapplied to other problems.
Industry- and Course-Tested. It is the basis of manyon-site professional training courses given by the author, who has used itscontents to train professionals and students in various forums since 1986. Thevarious changes in the new edition are course-tested, and reflect considerableteaching and consulting experience by the author. The book is the basis for anextensive series of video training tapes and on-line courses. More informationon these courses is available at the author's web site at cse.ucsc/~pohl.Acknowledgments
My special thanks to my wife, Debra Dolsberry, who encouraged me throughoutthis project. She acted as book designer and technical editor for this secondedition. She developed appropriate formats and style sheets in FrameMaker 4.0and guided the transition process from the first edition in troff. Shealso implemented and tested all major pieces of code. Her carefulimplementations of the code and exercises led to many improvements. StephenClamage of TauMetric Corporation provided wonderfully insightful comments onlanguage detail. William Engles of University of Wisconsin described animproved shuffling routine for the poker example. Reviews for this additionwere provided by Jean Bell, Colorado School of Mines; Arthur Delcher, LoyolaUniversity; Konstantin Läufer, Loyola University; James L. Murphy,California State University; Kent Wooldridge, California State University;Shih-Ho Wang, University of California; David B. Teague, Western CarolinaUniversity; Lukasz Pruski, California State University; and David Gregory.Randal Burns and Hiroya Chiba, teaching assistants and computer sciencegraduate students of University of California at Santa Cruz, also contributedto the reviewing process.
The first edition had help, inspiration, and encouragement from, PeterApers, University of Twente, The Netherlands; Henri Bal, Vrije University, TheNetherlands; Michael Beeson, State University of California; Nan Borreson,Borland International; Douglas Campbell, University of Conneticut; CathyCollins, USC; Steve Demurjian; Robert Doran, University of Auckland, NewZealand; Robert Durling, UCSC; Daniel Edelson, UCSC; Anton Eliens, VrijeUniversity, The Netherlands; Ray Fujioka, USC; Thomas Judson, University ofPortland; Al Kelley, UCSC; Jim Kempf, Sun Microsystems, Incorporated; DarrellLong, UCSC; Charlie McDowell, UCSC; Laura Pohl, Cottage Consultants; Reind vand
