Modified September 22, 2009

This book is aimed at beginners taking a programming course and people learning C++ as self study. For details, see these samples:

• Preface
• Table of Contents
• Chapter 0: Notes to the Reader
• Chapter 12: A Display Model

This book is based on a course I designed for engineering freshmen at Texas A&M University. It has now been taught by me and others for three years and to more than 1200 students. It is currently available in (physical and web) book stores.

I wrote an academic paper to explain a possible role for the book/course in a more complete education: Programming in an undergraduate CS curriculum

Note this is not the 4th edition of The C++ Programming Language and it uses the current ISO standard C++, C++98, rather than the still future C++0x.

This page and its supporting material is under construction. Comments and suggestions are welcome. In particular, I'd like to hear if someone adopts the book for a course. Maybe we could set up a mechanism for sharing experience.

By the numbers:

• 1268 pages
• 28 chapters
• 5 appendices
• 1 preface
• 1 glossary
• 1 index
• just over a quarter of a million words
• 39 photos
• 67 screen shots
• 167 diagrams
• 120 tables
• 375 exercises
• 26 drills
• 650 review questions
• 55 bibliographical references
• 4lb==1.83kg (that's much heavier than my laptop!)

Supporting material:

• Instructor's guide
• Lecture slides
• Selected exercise solutions
• Errata
• C++ glossary
• PPP-public: a google group for people who whant to disuss the book as part of courses. (very new)
• Interviews, many of which touches upon education, programming, software development issues, and this book
• Bjarne Stroustrup's C++ and personal homepages
• Bjarne Stroustrup's academic/educational homepage

• Standard library access header
• Note that different compilation systems and programmer communities have different conventions for where to put header files. The book assumes that a header file is in the same directory/folder as the .cpp files and uses "plain" #include "std_lib_facilities.h". If that doesn't work, try #include "../std_lib_facilities.h" (one level up) and #include "../../std_lib_facilities.h" (two levels up).
• Complete collection of code fragments (revised) (contains an automated build of FLTK for Windows)
• Complete collection of code fragments (original)
• First "mysterious" version calculator example for Chapter 6 page 202 "Try This".
• Be-bugged calculator example for Chapter 6 exercise in debugging.
• Be-bugged calculator example for Chapter 7 exercise in debugging.
• Graphics and GUI support code for Chapters12-16
• FLTK source files from FLTK.org from which you can build the FLTK Graphical User Interface (GUI) library and toolset.
• Matrix class for Chapter 24

I am assuming that you (the reader) have a working modern C++ compiler. If you are a student on a programming course, your school will have installed one and there will be teachers or teaching assistent to help you in case of trouble. If you are on your own and not an experienced programmer, I strongly recommend you seek help from someone who has installed software before. One problem is that there are lots of C++ compilers and operating system distributions, so I can't simply provide you with a simple description of how to install: It will depend on "which compiler?" and which "operating system?" Here is a writeup sent to me by a reader using the Ubuntu distribution of Linux and GCC. And here is a Makefile for Mac sent by a reader.

Why birds? Just because I like that photo; I was looking for a calm image. Sometimes a bird is just a bird. They are swans, by the way.

Translations in progress:

• Chinese (simplified) - Pearson Education Asia Ltd. and China Machine Press/Huazhang Co.
• German - Pearson Education Deutschland Gmbh
• Greek - Papasotiriou Bookstores and Publishers
• Japanese - Shoeisha Company Ltd.
• Korean - Pearson Education Korea Ltd and Dae Woong Publishing Co.
• Polish - Helion SA
• Russian - Williams Publishing
• Portugese - Artmed Editoria SA (Brazil)
• French - Pearson Educational France.

Reviews:

• Free Software magazine by Ryan Cartwrigth.

Comments on the web:

• Postings on Amazon.
• Postings on Amazon.uk.
• Posting by Tom Lawrence.
• Michael Berris' blog.
• Student review.