The C++ Programming Language

Modified March 18, 2008

Advice of the day
(from TC++PL)

18.12[7] Remember that predicates are functions and objects, not types; sec18.4.2.

FAQ of the day

Why don't we have virtual constructors?

Article of the day

A History of C++: 1979-1991. ACM HOPL-2. March 1993.

C++ is a general purpose programming language with a bias towards systems programming that

I (Bjarne Stroustrup) am the designer and original implementor of C++. You can find the language, the techniques for using it, and the techniques for implementing it described in my books, my papers, in hundreds of books by others, and thousands of papers by others. There are far too many to list. Try a bookstore or a library. Answers to many questions about C++ can be found in

my FAQ,
my C++ Style and Technique FAQ
my C++ glossary, and
some interviews that I have given.

C++ is standardized by ANSI (The American National Standards Institute), BSI (The British Standards Institute), DIN (The German national standards organization), several other national standards bodies, and ISO (The International Standards Organization). You can find a somewhat out-of-date draft standard here. The ISO standard has been finalized and adopted by unanimous vote Nov 14, 1997. It was ratified in August 1998 by a 22-0 vote. The standard is ISO/IEC 14882; it is available for downloading at the National Committee for Information Technology Standards Electronic Store. The cost is (as I write this) US$18.00 payable on-line via credit card. The downloaded document is in PDF form, 2794KB total size. The ISO C++ standards committee maintains an official site with information about the current state of the standards effort. ISO has published a revised standard (with relatively minor clarifications and resolutions known as Corrigenda 1) as ISO/IEC 14882:2003. It is available as a book (on paper): "The C++ Standard", published by Wiley, ISBN 0 470 84674-7. Here are some more standard-related links

a press release about C++ and its standard intended for non-programmers
a press release about the availability of the standard
My book The Design and Evolution of C++ describes the standards process and many of the design decisions made
My book The C++ Programming Language (Special Edition) describes C++ as defined by the ISO standard.
The standard committee's technical report on implementation issues and programming techniques related to performance. This should be of particular interest to programmers of embedded systems.
The standard committee's technical report on library extensions that are likely to become part of C++0x (possibly after some revisions).
My foreword to the printed version of the C++ standard.
An 2004 evolution working group wish list; that is, the list of suggested additions to the C++ core language - note that only a fraction of these will be accepted into C++0x. Here is the current state of the evolution proposals.
A standard library wishlist maintained by Matt Austern.
A call for proposals for further standard libraries.

Discussions about C++ and its use can be found in most forums covering programming. The usenet groups comp.lang.c++.moderated and alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ are good examples. These groups can be accessed in various ways including Google Groups (sort by date).

Applications, compilers, etc.:

A list of interesting C++ applications. I welcome suggestions for additions.
A list of major industry applications and tools with evolution paths by Vincent Lextrait.
An incomplete list of C++ compilers.
Hans-J. Boehm's site for C and C++ garbage collection and a couple of sites offering collectors based on his work (University of Tokyo, geodesic.com).
Test suites are available for C++. For example: Plumhall and Perennial.

Libraries, etc:

A list of available C++ libraries known as the C++ libraries FAQ.
Boost.org: A repository for libraries meant to work well with the C++ standard library.
Doug Schmidt's site with information about a lot of things including the ACE framework and the TAO real-time ORB.
High-performance numerical libraries provide excellent tests for interesting new programming techniques: The Object-Oriented Numerics Page is a list of libraries, projects, and mailing lists. For example: POOMA from LANL, Blitz++ from U. of Waterloo, MTL from Indiana Univarsity, and ROOT from CERN. These libraries, and many more, are available for downloading.
SGI's implementation of the STL.
Dinkumware's online standard library reference.
Rogue Wave's online documentation of an commentary on the standard library.

C++ design and history:

1991-2006: Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006.
1979-1991: My paper about C++'s design and early years.
A more comprenensive book: The Design and Evolution of C++.
The Computer History Museum's site for early C++ sources (code, documentation, papers, etc.).
An old, but unfortunately not completely irrelevant, net posting answering some unfair criticisms of C++.

C++ GUI libraries and toolkits:

Embedded systems:

A confence paper on the basic ideas of using C++ in embedded systems.
JSF++: The JSF air vehicle C++ coding standards.
The ISO C++ committee's TR on performance.
An ASCII version of the slides I used for my keynote at the Spring'99 Embedded Systems Conference.

FAQs:

My FAQ.
My C++ Style and Technique FAQ.
Marshall Cline's C++ FAQ.
C++ Standards FAQ containing many valuable links (including some to implementations of the standard library).
The learn.c-c++ newsgroup FAQ presents much information of use for C and/or C++ novices.
STL (Standard Template Library) FAQ.

Learning and teaching C++:

A net posting about how to approach learning C++.
A list of resources for people learning C++ from The Cambridge University Engineering Department.
An extensive collection of book reviews can be found on the ACCU (The Association of C and C++ Users) site.

Resources:

A list of C++ resources such as libraries, implementations, books, FAQs, other C++ pages, etc..
A large (18,000+) collection of links to information on OO, OOP languages, etc. called Cetus.
A catalog of C++ links from Forschungszentrum Julich.
Addison-Wesley's links to C++ and OOP resources.
Sean Corfield's site summarizing the changes from ARM C++ to Standard C++.
David Tribble's paper listing incompatibilities between C++ and C99.
Greg Comeau's C++ related site in New York.
Brad Appleton's collection of C++ and OOP links.
The C++ section of the open directory project.

Collections of articles:

Herb Sutter's collection of articles focussing on how to learn and use Standard C++ in a modern style.
Kevlin Henneys' collection of thought provoking and useful articles about good C++ design and style.
Artima's C++ source has a collection of C++ articles, columns, etc.
Danny Kalev's C++ articles and news items on informIT.com.

Videos:

A C++0x talk given at University of Waterloo. Google, NYC. August 2007.
A talk on C++0x initializer lists given at Google, Mountainview. February 2007.
Several videos, audio recordings, and transcripts of talks, panels, and interviews from Dr. Dobb's Technetcast archieves.

Dennis Ritchie's homepage containing lots of interesting information about the history of C, Unix, and (AT&T) Bell Lab's computer science research center (where C++ was born).
The Computer History Museum's Software Preservation Group's colection of C++ sources currently focusing on the early years. Contributions are most welcome (see the site for details).

When I list a site it is because I found some interesting information there, not because I wanted to endorse a product. All the major software suppliers have C++ related information on their sites. If you feel that I ought to add a site, feel free to tell me what and why.

The C++ Programming Language

Advice of the day(from TC++PL)

FAQ of the day

Article of the day

Advice of the day
(from TC++PL)