C++, ANSI C++, Windows, and Other Areas of Confusion

Sams Teach Yourself C++ in 10 Minutes makes no assumptions about your computer. This book teaches ISO/ANSI Standard C++ (which from now on I'll just call Standard C++). The International Organization for Standardization (ISO), of which the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) is a member, is a standard-setting organization that publishes (among other things) documents that describe exactly how proper C++ programs will look and operate. You should be able to create such programs on any system.

You won't see anything in this book about windows, list boxes, graphics, and so forth. Collections of classes and functions (often called libraries) that work directly with your operating system (Windows, Unix, or Mac, for instance) provide these special features, but they are not part of the ISO/ANSI standard. Thus, the program in this book uses console input/output, which is simpler and is available on every system.

The program you will create can be easily adapted to use graphical user interface (GUI) features, so you can build on what you learn here to work with those libraries.