Modified October 3, 2012

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, at TAMU, and elsewhere, in academia and industry, for almost five years and to thousands of 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 C++11.

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:

• PPP Style Guide
• Instructor's Guide
• Lecture slides
• Selected exercise solutions
• Errata
• An RGB color chart for use with the graphics chapters.
• C++ glossary
• PPP-public: a google group for people who want to dicuss the book as part of courses.
• 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)
• 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.

A reader supplied files that you might find helpful if you are struggling with Visual Studio and std_lib_facilities.h:

• How to get your #include "std_lib_facilities.h" working if you are using Visual Studio 2010 express
• Installing Visual studio express 2010 and Std_lib_facilities

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:

• Polish: Helion SA. March 2010. 978-83-246-2233-7.
• German - Pearson Education Deutschland Gmbh. 2010. ISBN 978-3-86894-005-3. Support page.
• Chinese (simplified) - Pearson Education Asia Ltd. and China Machine Press/Huazhang Co. 2010. ISBN: 9787111303220
• French - Pearson Educational France. 2010. ISBN 978-2-7440-7442-4. Support page with online appendices. errata.
• Russian translation. Williams Publishing. 2010. ISBN 978-5-8459-1621-1.
• Korean - Pearson Education Korea Ltd and Dae Woong Publishing Co. 2010. ISBN978-8-98604-480-5. www.dwpub.co.kr
• Japanese translation. Shoeisha Company Ltd. 2011. ISBN 978-4798119595.
• Portugese translation. Bookman Publishing. Artmed Editoria SA (Brazil). 2012. ISBN 987-85-7780-958-5.