C++ Book?

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Jan 12, 2009
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I have a small bit of C experience, and I'm familiar with OOP in Java, but I never took the time, or had the opportunity to really dig in to C++. So I'm looking for a good book that will provide me with a lot of information on the language itself instead of introducing me to programming using C++ as a language.

Or are there any comprehensive online resources available?
 
I like the O'Reilly books, but you do have to carefully select which one you're after sometimes as there can be significant differences between them in terms of expected reader skill-level.
 
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If you're going to pay money for a C++ reference, go out of your way to get something up to date which at least covers C++ 11. There's a lot of nice features in C++ 11 (auto and decltype, move assignment, lambdas, threads, futures, std::bind, shared_ptr/weak_ptr/unique_ptr, all the goodies in the <random> header, etc.), and it would be worth it to have a reference for these features.

cplusplus.com and cppreference.com seem to be an okay references most of the time. I usually find myself going there before I crack out a book.

I always liked Stroustrup's own book best.

....so in this case, you would get the 4th edition of Stroustrup's book, as this most recent edition covers C++ 11.
 
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If you're going to pay money for a C++ reference, go out of your way to get something up to date which at least covers C++ 11. There's a lot of nice features in C++ 11 (auto and decltype, move assignment, lambdas, threads, futures, std::bind, shared_ptr/weak_ptr/unique_ptr, all the goodies in the <random> header, etc.), and it would be worth it to have a reference for these features.

cplusplus.com and cppreference.com seem to be an okay references most of the time. I usually find myself going there before I crack out a book.



....so in this case, you would get the 4th edition of Stroustrup's book, as this most recent edition covers C++ 11.


The 4th edition was actually the book I ended up throwing on my wish list. Thanks for the help everyone.
 
If you want a definitive language resource, Stroustrup is good, but if you want to actually learn the language, I recommend Lippman's C++ Primer (there are several books titled C++ primer, but Lippman's the best). My job every day of the week is writing C++ code, and while I own Stroustrup, Lippman is the book I reach to whenever I need to reference something.
 
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The 4th edition was actually the book I ended up throwing on my wish list. Thanks for the help everyone.

I have this book and I do enjoy reading it very much. I am about 1/3 of the way through the book. However I am a c++ programmer who has programmed professionally for 17+ years. I have wirtten over 1 million lines of c++ code (well MFC and Qt) in the day job...

My main motivations get this book were:
  1. Better exposure to the c++ standard instead of what the Visual Studio compliler allows.
  2. Learn what c++11 brings to the table
  3. Relearn the parts of c++ that I rarely use as a (MFC now Qt) programmer
 
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Consider, also, Stroustrup's "A Tour of C++". It's a relatively short book, but it's written specifically for people like you: people who have programming experience, but who wish to delve into C++.

Given a copy of that book, a copy of any recent draft standard (available freely) and cppreference.com, you're golden.

Any particular reason why you're looking at this book rather than at those mentioned here?
 
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