C++ is a general purpose programming language designed to make programming more enjoyable
for the serious programmer. Except for minor details, C++ is a superset of the C programming language.
In addition to the facilities provided by C, C++ provides flexible and efficient facilities for
defining new types. A programmer can partition an application into manageable pieces by defining
new types that closely match the concepts of the application. This technique for program construction
is often called data abstraction. Objects of some userdefined
types contain type information.
Such objects can be used conveniently and safely in contexts in which their type cannot be determined
at compile time. Programs using objects of such types are often called object based. When
used well, these techniques result in shorter, easier to understand, and easier to maintain programs.
The key concept in C++ is class. A class is a userdefined
type. Classes provide data hiding,
guaranteed initialization of data, implicit type conversion for userdefined
types, dynamic typing,
usercontrolled
memory management, and mechanisms for overloading operators. C++ provides
much better facilities for type checking and for expressing modularity than C does. It also contains
improvements that are not directly related to classes, including symbolic constants, inline substitution
of functions, default function arguments, overloaded function names, free store management
operators, and a reference type. C++ retains C’s ability to deal efficiently with the fundamental
objects of the hardware (bits, bytes, words, addresses, etc.). This allows the userdefined
types to
be implemented with a pleasing degree of efficiency.
C++ and its standard libraries are designed for portability. The current implementation will run
on most systems that support C. C libraries can be used from a C++ program, and most tools that
support programming in C can be used with C++.
This book is primarily intended to help serious programmers learn the language and use it for
nontrivial projects. It provides a complete description of C++, many complete examples, and many
more program fragments.