Last updated: 2012-02-14
This is a big post – over 12200 16600 words – and so I’ve decided to make it available as a PDF download, which you can get here:
It has bookmarks for easier navigation along with a Table of Contents and page numbers.
I expect that I will revise this from time to time and welcome any suggestions, feedback, and (especially) corrections. If so I will update the Last updated field at the top and will create a revised PDF as well. I hope this proves useful.
Update: I realized when looking at stats the other day that this post was so big that it wasn’t going through to many people’s RSS feeds (including my own!). So I stripped out the text and have decided just to keep it as a PDF link.
Updates and Changes:
2012-02-14
New sections:
- Namespaces
- enums subheading under Fundamental types
- Functions
- A brief word on the volatile keyword
- Casting values
- nullptr subheading under Pointers
- Lambda expressions
Significant changes:
- Added discussion of cstdint header to Fundamental types
- Touched up some language and added a brief note on “mixins” to Multiple inheritance
- Added subheadings to C++ constructors; also revised its code sample
- Added a note about non-string uses of the ‘char’ type to Strings
There were many other miscellaneous edits made. I incorporated much of the great feedback I’ve received in the comments. I did not end up moving the Pointers section this time but have not ruled it out either. I’m on the fence about it because, to me, modern C++ is all about clean, safe code with automatic storage duration objects and C++ Standard Library container types. Pointers are still a part of C++ and likely always will be. But I’m not convinced that they belong right up front. I need to re-read the document through from beginning to end before I make a decision on that, I guess.
Most of the things I wanted to add this time around are in the document now. I’m considering a section on multi-threading but that will have to wait for another update. Once VS11’s ranged for loop support is released, I’ll be adding a section on that. I would like to make the templates discussion a lot more in depth at some point but that’s something for another time.
The link above has not changed; the new version is there now and has subsumed the old one. I’ll be posting this as a new blog post as well so if you see it twice, that’s why.