This
tutorial is for those people who want to learn programming in C++ and do not
necessarily have any previous knowledge of other programming languages. Of
course any knowledge of other programming languages or any general computer
skill can be useful to better understand this tutorial, although it is not
essential.
If you are familiar with C
language you can take the first 3 parts of this tutorial (from 1.1 to 3.4) as a
review, since they mainly explain the C part of C++.
Part 4 describes
object-oriented programming.
Part 5 mostly describes the
new features introduced by ANSI-C++ standard.
The
tutorial is divided in 6 parts and each part is in several different sections. You
can access any section directly from the main index or begin the tutorial from any
point and follow the links at the bottom of each section.
Many sections include an
additional page with specific examples that describe the use of the newly
acquired knowledge in that chapter. It is recommended to read these examples
and be able to understand each of the code lines that constitute it before
passing to the next chapter.
A good way to gain
experience with a programming language is by modifying and adding new
functionalities on your own to the example programs that you fully understand. Don't
be scared to modify the examples provided with this tutorial. There are no
reports of people whose computer has been destroyed due to that.
The
ANSI-C++ standard accepted as an international standard is relatively recent. It
was published in November 1997, nevertheless the C++ language exists from long
ago (1980s). Therefore there are many compilers which do not support all the
new capabilities included in ANSI-C++, specially those released prior to the
publication of the standard.
During this tutorial, the
concepts that have been added by ANSI-C++ standard which are not included in
most older C++ compilers are indicated by the following icon:
<- new in ANSI C++
Also, given the enormous
extension that the C language enjoys (the language from which C++ was derived),
an icon will also be included when the topic explained is a concept whose implementation
is clearly different between C and C++ or that is exclusive of C++:
<- different implementation in C and C++
The
examples included in this tutorial are all console programs. That means they
use text to communicate with the user and to show results.
All C++ compilers support
the compilation of console programs. If you want to get more information on how
to compile the examples that appear in this tutorial, check the document Compilation
of Console Programs,
where you will find specific information about this subject for several C++
compilers existing in the market.
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