B. Resources

Because the C++ programming language has been around for a number of years, there are ample resources for you to turn to for more information. In this appendix we’ll highlight just a few of those options. As with most things, a simple Internet search (using Google or whatever you prefer) will always return a ton of results. But to possibly save yourself that step, here’s a list of useful Web sites and tables of helpful information.

Web Sites

Of the thousands and thousands of C++-related Web sites, we’ve identified a few you might want to familiarize yourself with up front. But first, a couple of things you should know about C++ Web sites:

Because of the connectedness of the two languages, you’ll often see sites that discuss both C and C++. From these you’ll have to filter out the information that doesn’t pertain to you (namely, the C-specific stuff). Second, many of the available resources stem from university settings (which can be great, but specific in scope) or provide technical documentation, rather than detailed explanation (which can be less useful when you’re just learning).

With that in mind, here are a few good Web sites, with a brief description of each:

• Bjarne Stroustrup’s Home Page (www.research.att.com/~bs)

This is the official home page of the original creator of C++. There’s some technical stuff here but mostly good explanations and instructions on how to do specific tasks.

• cplusplus.com (www.cplusplus.com)

Here you’ll find a fair amount of data regarding C++, with tutorials, compiler information, and a support forum.

• C++ FAQ Lite (http://parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/index.html)

This is just what you’d imagine: a list of frequently asked questions related to C++. The explanations, and a number of resources linked through these pages, are great at showing you how to program in C++ the right way.

• Cprogramming.com (www.cprogramming.com)

There are tutorials for many subjects, information on different tools you can use, and resources for getting help.

• About C/C++/C# (http://cplus.about.com)

Part of the About.com Web site (which covers everything from Oprah’s Book Club to Buddhism), these pages feature a thorough tutorial on C++, one topic at a time.

• C and C++ Style Guides (www.chris-lott.org/resources/cstyle/)

Good programming style is more important than most people realize, greatly assisting the programmer in finding and preventing errors, understanding code, and more. On this page you’ll find links to a couple of dozen guides to programming style.

Tables

This book contains a handful of tables, and you may not want to go searching through the entire text to find them. We’ve included the most useful tables here, along with a couple of new ones.

Table B.1. This list of C++ operators—including a couple that were not discussed in this book—ranks them from highest precedence to the lowest. The precedence numbers are meaningless except that operators with the same number have the same precedence. Associativity determines which operators are executed first if multiple operators in a statement have the same precedence. This table does not include the bitwise operators, which were not discussed in the book.

Table B.2. Choosing an appropriate number type affects the values a variable can store and how much memory it requires. The memory usage of each type may differ depending on your operating system.

Table B.3. In several places we stated that a character is actually an integer. Here are the corresponding decimal and character values. Those through number 32 are nonprinting characters.

Table B.4. These escape sequences have special meaning when used within strings.

Table B.5. These flags are used when opening a file. These are all in the std namespace.