Errata for Early Printings of The C++ Programming Language (3rd Edition)

Modified August 19, 2004

Errata for Bjarne Stroustrup: The C++ Programming Language (3rd edition), Addison-Wesley, 1997. ISBN0-201-88954-4.

I classify the errata into two categories. "Errors and Clarifications" are things that could impare understanding. This catagory contains more clarifications than corrections of "errors." "Typos" are spelling and grammar mistakes.

For brevity, I use the old replacement syntax: s/old/new/

I very much appreciate reports of errors and constructive comments on the contents in general. I try to document and fix errors as soon as I can, often a day or two after I find the problem.

Note that index terms often refer to the page where the discussion of a topic begins rather that to the page where a term first occurs. This occationally makes the index appear to be off by one.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 1st through 4th printings: Markus Ackermann, Tom Adams, Darin Adler, Laird Allshouse, Alan Bellingham, Jan Bielawski, Jose J. Capo, Ian Cargill, Ales Cepek, Steve Clamage, Ron Coutts, Rodrigo Figueiredo, Len Fischer, Alan Fen, Mike Ferrel, John Fuller, Lois Goldthwaite, Bill Gibbons, E. Edward He, John R. Hubbard, John Jacobsma, Jon Jagger, Nicolai Josuttis, Jim Jowdy, Ivan Skytte Joergensen, James Kanze, Andrew Koenig, Giovanni Lagorio, Ando Ki, Bob Kline, Nate Lewis, Alan Lundin, Achin Loerke, Saroj Mahapatra, Arun Marathe, A. G. McDowell, Amir Mendelson, Nathan Myers, Michael R. Murphy, Edward A. Nilges, Jeffrey D. Oldham, Brian Parker, Sanjay Pattni, Tom Plum, John Rafter, Cliff Rhodes, Allard van Riel, Doug Rorem, Gary Salsbery, Jonathan Schilling, Paul E. Sevinç, Ken Shrum, Ted Smith, Keith Thompson, Judy Ward, Dean Wette, James B. White, III, Mike Xu, Geoffrey Yerem, Hongtao Zhu (and I missed a few "early birds").

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 5th printing: Tom Adams, X.J. Bao, Luigi Ballabio, Harold Barrett, Jim Barry, Jan Bielawski, Seymour Bloom, David Bruce, Feng Chen, Karl Dickson, Jose Durazo, Ragnar Hojland Espinosa, Jim Fisher, Andrew Fournier, Francis Glassborow, Jonathan Goldstine, Steve Heller, Mika Holkeri, Juinn-Dar Huang, Alex Jonas, Nico Josuttis, Yechiel Kimchi, Nainan Kovoor, Parames Laosinchai, Thomas Matelich, Dimitris Michailidis, Nathan Miserocchi, Jesper Steen Moeller, Nathan Myers, Siemel B. Naran, Gabriel Netterdag, John Rafter, Paul E. Sevinç, and Bob Tracy.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 6th printing: Jim Barry, Jan Bielawski, Walter Brown, Brian Buckley, Gustavo Leite de Mendonca Chaves, Jim Crossley, Janka Mincer Daszkiewicz, Andrew Duncan, Stephen Gilardi, Marc Girod, Ricardo Guimaraes, David Grossman, Dick Hadsell, Juinn-Dar Huang, Nicholai Josuttis, Danny Kalev, Stefan Kuhlins, Hwijjae Lee, Nate Lewis, Nils Åke Ljunggren, Kaushik Mahajan, Saroj Mahapatra, Owen Magee, Eric Meine, Gabriel Netterdag, Bill Robertson, Niall Smart, Jonathan Schilling, Lally Singh, Bob Tracy, Jason Underdown, Martin Welford, and Jim Williams.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 7th and 8th printings: Donald Bashford, Tim Barrera, Valentin Bonnard, Stan Brown, Janka Mincer Daszkiewicz, Stephen J Friedl, Dale Gerdemann, Howard Hinnant, Jerry Holland, Juinn-Dar Huang, Uwe Lammers, Mark Langerak, Songshan Li, Hans Olsson, Jason Orendorff, Todd Marshall, Thomas Matelich, Nathan Myers, Gabriel Netterdag, Rainer Ruppersberg, Andreas Scherer, Ellak Somfai, Wayne Stewart, Daniel Villeneuve, Mike Yang, William Yeh, Shmuel Zeigerman, and Jay Zipnick.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 9th and 10th printings: Darin Adler, Christopher L. Akerley, Jim Barry, Pete Becker, Ferdinand de Boevere, Ali Boroujerdi, Philip Brabbin, Stan Brown, Janina Mincer Daszkiewicz, Sergey P. Derevyago, Isard Dunietz, Todd Fox, Dale Gerdemann, Lois Goldthwaite, Steve Goodson, Daniel Goujot, Jeff Greif, Dag Henriksson, Ivan J. Johnson, Jeffrey Juliano, Mike Kidd, Ryan King, Marc Lepage, Matt Liu, Greg Lutz, Harry Martyrossian, Eberhard Mattes, Ian McCulloch, Michel Michaud, Glenn Moloney, Barry Nathan, Gabriel Netterdag, Asle Olufsen, David Scott Page, David Pannett, Peter N Roth, Enrico Scholz, Manuel Sequeira, Paul E. Sevinç, Anon Sricharoenchai, Bob Steagall, Neil Stewart, Andy Tenne-Sens, Daniel Thayer, Shoichi Uchida , Judy Ward, William Yeh, Dennis Yelle, and Abbas Zawawi.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 1st/11th printing: Keith P. Boruff, Simon Bradley, Stephen Clamage, Sergey P. Derevyago, Joseph Koenig, Nicolai Josuttis, Bernd Mohr, David Orban, Hideaki Onaru, Bowie Owens, Tamás Marcinkovics, David Scott Page, Manlio Perillo, Peter N. Roth, Andreas Scherer, Paul E. Sevinç, Keyser Soze, Jan Christiaan van Winkel, Ingve Vormestrand, Dennis Yelle, and Shmuel Zeigerman.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 3rd/12th printing: Linyu Jia, Thomas Luzat, Manlio Perillo and Mark Rodgers.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 4th/14th printing: A. Alper Atici, Debatosh Debnath, Sergey P. Derevyago, Francis Glassborow, Marian Hellema, Larry Holmquist, Cay S. Horstmann, Henrik Johansson, Nils Åke Ljunggren, Jeffrey D. Oldham, Robert Marshall, Gary Memovich, Dan Melamed, Manlio Perillo, Andreas Scherer, Daniel Thayer, Jeremy Todd, Ioannis Vranos, Gerhard Wesp, Liam Woodcock, Jan Christiaan van Winkel, Poe-Min Oliver Wu, and Dennis Yelle.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 5th/15th printing: David Abrahams, Jonathan Cano, William Farmer, Scott Field, Mistovich, Markus Laire, Ngo Bach Long, Arnaud Meurgues, Adolfo J. Millan, Joaquín Ma López Muñoz, Ken Takusagawa, Timothy D. Rogstad, and Ioannis Vranos.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 6th/16th printing: Alex Abacus, Saeed Alaei, Isura Edirisinghe, Yaakov Eisenberg, Miguel Drouin, Stephen Flynn, Anthony J. Gentile, Kenny Knecht, Sebastian Setzer, Qiu Zongyan, Ioannis Vranos, Ping-Jer Yeh, and Jie Zhang.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 8th/18th printing: Goher Attila, Mark Davis, Phil Dumont, Attila Goher, Dag Henriksson, Craig A. Jackson, Martin Lemieux, Manish Malik, Michel Michaud, Paul P. Nasados, Jr., Alexey Rychkov, Ariel Steiner, Ioannis Vranos, Stephan Wefing, Thomas Witt, Fazl Rahman, and Lijun Wang.

Thanks to people who have mailed me suggested corrections for the 19th printing: Pedro Carvalho, Semih Cemiloglu, David Dillard, Philipp Forsthuber, Matthew W. Markland, Michael Orlov, and Craig Torell.

Errata for the 1st printing yielding the 2nd.

Errata for the 2nd printing yielding the 3rd.

Errata for the 3rd printing yielding the 4th.

Errata for the 4th printing yielding the 5th.

Errata for the 5th printing yielding the 6th.

Errata for the 6th printing yielding the 7th.

Errata for the 7th and 8th printings yielding the 9th.

Errata for the 9th and 10th printings yielding the 11th and the SE. Because of the amount of work it took to prepare the "special edition" this errata is not 100% complete.

Errata for the 11th printing yielding the 12th printing.

Errata for the 12th printing yielding the 13th printing.

Errata for the 13th printing yielding the 14th printing.

Errata for the 14th printing yielding the 15th printing.

Errata for the 15th printing yielding the 16th and 17th printings.

Errata for the 16th printing yielding the 18th printing.

Errata for the 18th printing yielding the 19th printing.

Errata for the 19th printing yielding the 20th printing.

You find the printing number at the bottom of the copyright page.

A few apparent errors are left because they reflect open issues that I expect to be resolved in favor of what the book says.

I have been asked "Why is there so much errata?" Because

it's a long book;
I fix and document any problem that comes to my attention - even if it strictly speaking isn't an error;
there still are some minor changes coming from the standards effort;
I do clarifications and minor improvement based on readers' comments.

Also: "Do the errors compromise the book's utility?" The comments I have received from reviewers and readers indicate that this is not the case, and that the book manages to get the key concepts and the understanding of technical details across as intended. If you count omissions and inaccuracies as errors, even the 1st printing this book had fewer errors than most textbooks and references.

- Bjarne