One of the best books (two volumes actually) on learning how to use C++ can be found for free on the Net! It's titled: Thinking In C++ (2nd edition) by Bruce Eckel. You can put the books (and source code) onto your computer by choosing from these: Download Sites. The author teaches C++ programming in a way he considers to be natural. I found this book to be very interesting myself; and you'll find comments from others all over the world on the author's web site. (Since both volumes are only about C++ for any compiler/linker, you won't find anything about Windows™ API programming in them! But see below for some tutorials that do cover API.) This 2nd edition includes a chapter on the essentials of C before diving into the depths of C++. The source code for the book's examples may be in the same archives as the books; if not, you'll need to download those separately!
NOTE: Make sure you extract the contents of the source code archive ("TICPP-2nd-ed-Vol-one-code.zip") with full pathnames enabled! For example, under WinZip, the box "Use folder names" must be checked.
MAKE: Although I do not recommend trying to compile every chapter's sources before reading what Bruce has to say about them, you might want to test Borland's C++ 5.5 by doing the following: In the "C02" (chapter 02 sources) subfolder, look for the file "Borland.makefile" (each folder will contain one of these files) and rename it to "makefile". If you installed C++ 5.5 correctly, you should then be able to open a Command Prompt at the folder C02 and compile/link all of the code inside it by simply entering the command: make (at which time many lines similar to this should appear on your screen):
If you're just starting out in C/C++ programming for Windows™ 2000/XP, you should definitely look through some of these Tutorials (some include example programs with Windows API code):
http://www.winprog.org/
.
This
site contains a very good tutorial
on Windows™ C++ coding by theForger with real Windows™
code examples plus a very detailed
FAQ for those who are actually doing Windows™
programming!
http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/ . The C Plus Plus web site's online tutorial has some appealing pages on learning C++, but seems to end abruptly as if it were only half finished. The text does not appear to have been written by a native English speaker. The site itself has a number of other pages which may be of interest to you, such as a nice little C++ history page and a linked listing of the most popular C++ compilers. Their FAQ page had a nice little example of how to tell if your compiler supports the ANSI C++ standard which I've edited as ANSI.cpp, but that same page has a typo error in the title: "What is the POO: Object-oriented programming?" which should obviously read: "What is OOP: ...?" Compile (and run) ANSI by simply entering bcc32 ANSI.cpp which should compile and link the program like this:
|
C:\bc55\test>bcc32
ANSI.cpp C:\bc55\test>ansi |
If you find a better
program to do this, please let me know. By the way, I don't
even consider myself to be a C programmer let alone an expert in C++
!
If the "x" wasn't removed, it would give the warning message:
"Warning W8057
ANSI.cpp 10: Parameter 'x' is never used in function ansisupported <int>(int)",
but I'm not sure if that was intended or not!
Last Update: 27 March 2004.
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