Getting Started with C++

The first consideration in starting with C++ is a compiler. Most classroom environments these days have installed the latest version of Microsoft Visual C++. However, this can be a pricey option. See installation instructions if you need to install this.

An Alternate Development Environment for NT/Win2K

It is possible for NT/Win2K users to use notepad. However, see the installation instructions for

1. Cygwin
2. Emacs for NT/Win2K (if applicable)

If you want to use emacs to compile with the Microsoft compiler, you'll have to set up a bunch of environment variables.

Online Documentation

1. Microsoft
   1. C++ Language
   2. C Language
   3. Stream Library
   4. Standard Library

      This documentation is pretty terse on the standard library -- you may want to try SGI's STL documentation. Note that the Standard Library is a old frozen version of STL. However, much of the documentation is the same and SGI  has better explanations and examples.

   5. Microsoft has ported many of the standard C/C++ API's to their windows platform. Just type in the function you want documentation on at http://search.microsoft.com. For example, to use the C socket function (for network programming) just type in select. However, be forewarned, they have changed things a bit. They use different header file names, they do not store the errors codes in the global variable errno, their implementation only accepts socket descriptors and not file descriptors in general. Nevertheless, it is very useful for writing Microsoft specific code (of course) and still helpful for writing generic code (when combined with www.opengroup.org, for example).

      Here are some links to some mostly standard APIs:

      1. Standard C Run time library

      2. Sockets (aka Winsock)

      3. Remote Procedure Calls (RPC) (this is wire compatible with other standard implementations of RPC and is source code compatible if you know where they have hidden their special header file that contains the #define statements to translate the standard function names into Microsoft's non-standard function names).

      Unfortunately, Microsoft's threading API is completely non-standard. This may well be remedied with the Cygwin port of pthreads which may well be documented in www.opengroup.org's pthread section. We hope to verify this soon.

   6. Microsoft Specific: Visual C

2. GNU and Delorie
   1. C Preprocessor
   2. C++ Internals
   3. User's Manual for C/C++
   4. C Run Time Library  
   5. Command Line Options for Running the Compiler
   6. C++ Stream Library and index
   7. A Guide to Using STL
3. SGI

   Note: STL != standard library. In the mid-90's STL was frozen and incorporated into the standard library. Originally STL only consisted of containers (like maps, lists and vectors) and the standard library contained other things like streams. STL has continued to evolve at SGI and now contains is own implementation of streams and enhancements to containers that are not available in the standard library.

   This may be the best online documentation available for STL or the standard library. It has a lot of example programs and annotations to indicate which features are unique to STL.

4. Standardized Vendor Neutral C/C++ API

   Unix/Linux Commands and APIs at www.opengroup.org is quite extensive. It documents the standard sockets API (for network communication) and Pthreads (for portable multi-threading) that (we believe) are implemented in Cygwin.

5. Cygwin

   Cygwin User's Guide, API Reference & FAQ.

   These links are probably of little interest to anyone using MSVC. These links document the ports of compilers, function libraries and command line utilities from the GNU/UNIX environment.

   These are not terribly extensive -- but they are better than nothing.  The API reference is especially disappointing, it is mostly lists of function names that have been ported from the GNU environments to the NT/Win2000. When I queried the folks on the Cygwin mailing list,  the suggested I download the source for the details. However, Unix/Linux Commands and APIs at www.opengroup.org might be much more convenient.

6. Graphical User Interface Programming

Downloadable Source Code for More Advanced Programmers

1. Coplien's Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms is excellent and can be downloaded from http://netlib.bell-labs.com/netlib/c++/idioms/.
2. Todd's excellent articles on template programmng with source code are available at http://www.extreme.indiana.edu/~tveldhui/.

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