Note: This blog article has been superseded by the article at http://www.learncpp.com/?p=30. I added a “recent news” box to the front page of the site, which shows the most recent items posted in the News category. It’s the easiest way to find the most up to date news about the …
In the last chapter, we defined a function as a collection of statements that execute sequentially. While that is certainly true, that definition doesn’t provide much insight into why functions are useful. Let’s update our definition: A function is a reusable sequence of statements designed to do a particular job. …
Data and values In lesson , you learned that the majority of instructions in a program are statements, and that functions are groups of statements that execute sequentially. The statements inside the function perform actions that (hopefully) generate whatever result the program was designed to produce. But how do programs …
A is a programmer-readable note that is inserted directly into the source code of the program. Comments are ignored by the compiler and are for the programmer’s use only. In C++ there are two different styles of comments, both of which serve the same purpose: to help programmers document the …
This website utilizes the wonderful Tiga 1.0.2 theme, which works great under WordPress 2.1.3. However, when I upgraded the site to WordPress 2.2 (which now has built-in widget functionality), it quickly became clear that the widget functionality was not working properly under the Tiga 1.0.2 theme. Although you can set …
Chapter introduction Welcome to the first primary chapter of these C++ tutorials! In this chapter, we’ll take a first look at a number of topics that are essential to every C++ program. Because there are quite a few topics to cover, we’ll cover most at a fairly shallow level (just …
Before we can write our first program, we need to learn how to create new programs within our Integrated Development Environment (IDE). In this lesson, we’ll cover how to do that, and you’ll also compile and execute your first program! To write a C++ program inside an IDE, we typically …
An is a piece of software designed to make it easy to develop, build, and debug your programs. A typical modern IDE will include: Some way to easily load and save your code files. A code editor that has programming-friendly features, such as line numbering, syntax highlighting, integrated help, name …
Before we can write and execute our first C++ program, we need to understand in more detail how C++ programs get developed. Here is a graphic outlining a simplistic approach: Step 1: Define the problem that you would like to solve This is the “what” step, where you figure out …
The C language was developed in 1972 by Dennis Ritchie at Bell Telephone laboratories, primarily as a systems programming language (a language to write operating systems with). Ritchie’s primary goals were to produce a minimalistic language that was easy to compile, allowed efficient access to memory, produced efficient code, and …
