Name visibility

Named entities, such as variables, functions, and compound types need to be declared before being used in C++. The point in the program where this declaration happens influences its visibility: An entity declared outside any block has global scope, meaning that its name is valid anywhere in the code. While an entity declared within a …

Overloads and templates

In C++, two different functions can have the same name if their parameters are different; either because they have a different number of parameters, or because any of their parameters are of a different type. For example: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 …

Functions

Functions allow to structure programs in segments of code to perform individual tasks. In C++, a function is a group of statements that is given a name, and which can be called from some point of the program. The most common syntax to define a function is: type name ( parameter1, parameter2, ...) { statements …

Statements and flow control

A simple C++ statement is each of the individual instructions of a program, like the variable declarations and expressions seen in previous sections. They always end with a semicolon (;), and are executed in the same order in which they appear in a program. But programs are not limited to a linear sequence of statements. …

Basic Input/Output

The example programs of the previous sections provided little interaction with the user, if any at all. They simply printed simple values on screen, but the standard library provides many additional ways to interact with the user via its input/output features. This section will present a short introduction to some of the most useful. C++ …

Operators

Once introduced to variables and constants, we can begin to operate with them by using operators. What follows is a complete list of operators. At this point, it is likely not necessary to know all of them, but they are all listed here to also serve as reference. Assignment operator (=) The assignment operator assigns …

Constants

Constants are expressions with a fixed value.  Literals Literals are the most obvious kind of constants. They are used to express particular values within the source code of a program. We have already used some in previous chapters to give specific values to variables or to express messages we wanted our programs to print out, …

Variables and types

The usefulness of the "Hello World" programs shown in the previous chapter is rather questionable. We had to write several lines of code, compile them, and then execute the resulting program, just to obtain the result of a simple sentence written on the screen. It certainly would have been much faster to type the output …

Structure of a program….

The best way to learn a programming language is by writing programs. Typically, the first program beginners write is a program called "Hello World", which simply prints "Hello World" to your computer screen. Although it is very simple, it contains all the fundamental components C++ programs have: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 // …

C++ program’s Basics

Compilers?? The essential tools needed to follow these tutorials are a computer and a compiler toolchain able to compile C++ code and build the programs to run on it. C++ is a language that has evolved much over the years, and these tutorials explain many features added recently to the language. Therefore, in order to …