Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, Second Edition
Introduction Week 1 at a Glance: Day 1 Getting Started Day 2 The Parts of a C++ Program Day 3 Variables and Constants Day 4 Expressions and Statements Day 5 Functions Day 6 Basic Classes Day 7 More Program Flow Week 1 in Review Week 2 at a Glance: Day 8 Pointers Day 9 References Day 10 Advanced Functions Day 11 Arrays

Day 12 Inheritance Day 13 Polymorphism Day 14 Special Classes and Functions Week 2 in Review Week 3 at a Glance: Day 15 Advanced Inheritance Day 16 Streams Day 17 The Preprocessor Day 18 Object-Oriented Analysis and Design Day 19 Templates Day 20 Exceptions and Error Handling Day 21 Whats Next Week 3 in Review Appendixes A Operator Precedence B C++ Keywords C Binary and Hexadecimal D Answers

Index

Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days, Second Edition
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the living memory of David Levine.

Acknowledgments
A second edition is a second chance to acknowledge and to thank those folks without whose support and help this book literally would have been impossible. First among them are Stacey, Robin, and Rachel Liberty. I must also thank everyone associated with my books, both at Sams and at Wrox press, for being professionals of the highest quality. The editors at Sams did a fantastic job, and I must especially acknowledge and thank Fran Hatton, Mary Ann Abramson, Greg Guntle, and Chris Denny. I have taught an online course based on this book for a couple years, and many folks there contributed to finding and eradicating bugs and errors. A very large debt is owed to these folks, and I must especially thank Greg Newman, Corrinne Thompson, and also Katherine Prouty and Jennifer Goldman. I would also like to acknowledge the folks who taught me how to program: Skip Gilbrech and David McCune, and those who taught me C++, including Steve Rogers and Stephen Zagieboylo. I want particularly to thank Mike Kraley, Ed Belove, Patrick Johnson, Mike Rothman, and Sangam Pant, all of whom taught me how to manage a project and ship a product. Others who contributed directly or indirectly to this book include: Scott Boag, David Bogartz, Gene Broadway, Drew and Al Carlson, Frank Childs, Jim Culbert, Thomas Dobbing, James Efstratiou,

David Heath, Eric Helliwell, Gisele and Ed Herlihy, Mushtaq Khalique, Matt Kingman, Steve Leland, Michael Smith, Frank Tino, Donovan White, Mark Woodbury, Wayne Wylupski, and Alan Zeitchek. Programming is as much a business and creative experience as it is a technical one, and I must therefore acknowledge Tom Hottenstein, Jay Leve, David Rollert, David Shnaider, and Robert Spielvogel. Finally, I'd like to thank Mrs. Kalish, who taught my sixth-grade class how to do binary arithmetic in 1965, when neither she nor we knew why.

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Introduction
This book is designed to help you teach yourself how to program with C++. In just 21 days, you'll learn about such fundamentals as managing I/O, loops and arrays, object-oriented programming, templates, and creating C++ applications--all in well-structured and easy-to-follow lessons. Lessons provide sample listings--complete with sample output and an analysis of the code--to illustrate the topics of the day. Syntax examples are clearly marked for handy reference.

To help you become more proficient, each lesson ends with a set of common questions and answers, exercises, and a quiz. You can check your progress by examining the quiz and exercise answers provided in the book's appendix. Who Should Read This Book You don't need any previous experience in programming to learn C++ with this book. This book starts you from the beginning and teaches you both the language and the concepts involved with programming C++. You'll find the numerous examples of syntax and detailed analysis of code an excellent guide as you begin your journey into this rewarding environment. Whether you are just beginning or already have some experience programming, you will find that this book's clear organization makes learning C++ fast and easy. Conventions

NOTE: These boxes highlight information that can make your C++ programming more efficient and effective.

WARNING: These focus your attention on problems or side effects that can occur in specific situations.

These boxes provide clear definitions of essential terms.

DO use the "Do/Don't" boxes to find a quick summary of a fundamental principle in a lesson. DON'T overlook the useful information offered in these boxes.

This book uses various typefaces to help you distinguish C++ code from regular English. Actual C++ code is typeset in a special monospace font. Placeholders--words or characters temporarily used to represent the real words or characters you would type in code--are typeset in italic monospace. New or important terms are typeset in italic. In the listings in this book, each real code line is numbered. If you see an unnumbered line in a listing, you'll know that the unnumbered line is really a continuation of the preceding numbered code line (some code lines are too long for the width of the book). In this case, you should type the two lines as one; do not divide them.

q

Day 1 r Getting Started s Introduction s A Brief History of C++ s Programs s Solving Problems s Procedural, Structured, and Object-Oriented Programming s C++ and Object-Oriented Programming s How C++ Evolved s The ANSI Standard s Should I Learn C First? s Preparing to Program s Your Development Environment s Compiling the Source Code s Creating an Executable File with the Linker s The Development Cycle s Figure 1.1. s HELLO.CPPYour First C++ Program s Listing 1.1. HELLO.CPP, the Hello World program. s Compile Errors s Listing 1.2. Demonstration of s compiler error. s Summary s Q&A s Workshop s Quiz s Exercises

Day 1 Getting Started
Introduction

Welcome to Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days! Today you will get started on your way to becoming a proficient C++ programmer. You'll learn q Why C++ is the emerging standard in software development. The steps to develop a C++ program. How to enter, compile, and link your first working C++ program.

q

q

A Brief History of C++
Computer languages have undergone dramatic evolution since the first electronic computers were built to assist in telemetry calculations during World War II. Early on, programmers worked with the most primitive computer instructions: machine language. These instructions were represented by long strings of ones and zeroes. Soon, assemblers were invented to map machine instructions to humanreadable and -manageable mnemonics, such as ADD and MOV. In time, higher-level languages evolved, such as BASIC and COBOL. These languages let people work with something approximating words and sentences, such as Let I = 100. These instructions were translated back into machine language by interpreters and compilers. An interpreter translates a program as it reads it, turning the program instructions, or code, directly into actions. A compiler translates the code into an intermediary form. This step is called compiling, and produces an object file. The compiler then invokes a linker, which turns the object file into an executable program. Because interpreters read the code as it is written and execute the code on the spot, interpreters are easy for the programmer to work with. Compilers, however, introduce the extra steps of compiling and linking the code, which is inconvenient. Compilers produce a program that is very fast each time it is run. However, the time-consuming task of translating the source code into machine language has already been accomplished. Another advantage of many compiled languages like C++ is that you can distribute the executable program to people who don't have the compiler. With an interpretive language, you must have the language to run the program. For many years, the principle goal of computer programmers was to write short pieces of code that would execute quickly. The program needed to be small, because memory was expensive, and it needed to be fast, because processing power was also expensive. As computers have become smaller, cheaper, and faster, and as the cost of memory has fallen, these priorities have changed. Today the cost of a programmer's time far outweighs the cost of most of the computers in use by businesses. Well-written, easy-to-maintain code is at a premium. Easy- to-maintain means that as business requirements change, the program can be extended and enhanced without great expense.

Programs

The word program is used in two ways: to describe individual instructions, or source code, created by the programmer, and to describe an entire piece of executable software. This distinction can cause enormous confusion, so we will try to distinguish between the source code on one hand, and the executable on the other.

New Term: A program can be defined as either a set of written instructions created by a programmer or an executable piece of software.

Source code can be turned into an executable program in two ways: Interpreters translate the source code into computer instructions, and the computer acts on those instructions immediately. Alternatively, compilers translate source code into a program, which you can run at a later time. While interpreters are easier to work with, most serious programming is done with compilers because compiled code runs much faster. C++ is a compiled language.

Solving Problems
The problems programmers are asked to solve have been changing. Twenty years ago, programs were created to manage large amounts of raw data. The people writing the code and the people using the program were all computer professionals. Today, computers are in use by far more people, and most know very little about how computers and programs work. Computers are tools used by people who are more interested in solving their business problems than struggling with the computer. Ironically, in order to become easier to use for this new audience, programs have become far more sophisticated. Gone are the days when users typed in cryptic commands at esoteric prompts, only to see a stream of raw data. Today's programs use sophisticated "user-friendly interfaces," involving multiple windows, menus, dialog boxes, and the myriad of metaphors with which we've all become familiar. The programs written to support this new approach are far more complex than those written just ten years ago. As programming requirements have changed, both languages and the techniques used for writing programs have evolved. While the complete history is fascinating, this book will focus on the transformation from procedural programming to object-oriented programming. Procedural, Structured, and Object-Oriented Programming Until recently, programs were thought of as a series of procedures that acted upon data. A procedure, or function, is a set of specific instructions executed one after the other. The data was quite separate from the procedures, and the trick in programming was to keep track of which functions called which other functions, and what data was changed. To make sense of this potentially confusing situation, structured programming was created. The principle idea behind structured programming is as simple as the idea of divide and conquer. A computer program can be thought of as consisting of a set of tasks. Any task that is too complex to be

described simply would be broken down into a set of smaller component tasks, until the tasks were sufficiently small and self-contained enough that they were easily understood. As an example, computing the average salary of every employee of a company is a rather complex task. You can, however, break it down into these subtasks: 1. Find out what each person earns. 2. Count how many people you have. 3. Total all the salaries. 4. Divide the total by the number of people you have. Totaling the salaries can be broken down into 1. Get each employee's record. 2. Access the salary. 3. Add the salary to the running total. 4. Get the next employee's record. In turn, obtaining each employee's record can be broken down into 1. Open the file of employees. 2. Go to the correct record. 3. Read the data from disk. Structured programming remains an enormously successful approach for dealing with complex problems. By the late 1980s, however, some of the deficiencies of structured programing had became all too clear. First, it is natural to think of your data (employee records, for example) and what you can do with your data (sort, edit, and so on) as related ideas. Second, programmers found themselves constantly reinventing new solutions to old problems. This is often called "reinventing the wheel," and is the opposite of reusability. The idea behind reusability is to build components that have known properties, and then to be able to plug them into your program as you need them. This is modeled after the hardware world--when an engineer needs a new transistor, she doesn't usually invent one, she goes to the big bin of transistors and finds one that works the way she needs it to, or perhaps modifies it. There was no similar option for a software engineer.

New Term: The way we are now using computers--with menus and buttons and windows-fosters a more interactive, event-driven approach to computer programming. Event-driven means that an event happens--the user presses a button or chooses from a menu--and the program must respond. Programs are becoming increasingly interactive, and it has became important to design for that kind of functionality.

Old-fashioned programs forced the user to proceed step-by-step through a series of screens. Modern event-driven programs present all the choices at once and respond to the user's actions. Object-oriented programming attempts to respond to these needs, providing techniques for managing enormous complexity, achieving reuse of software components, and coupling data with the tasks that manipulate that data. The essence of object-oriented programming is to treat data and the procedures that act upon the data as a single "object"--a self-contained entity with an identity and certain characteristics of its own. C++ and Object-Oriented Programming C++ fully supports object-oriented programming, including the four pillars of object-oriented development: encapsulation, data hiding, inheritance, and polymorphism. Encapsulation and Data Hiding When an engineer needs to add a resistor to the device she is creating, she doesn't typically build a new one from scratch. She walks over to a bin of resistors, examines the colored bands that indicate the properties, and picks the one she needs. The resistor is a "black box" as far as the engineer is concerned--she doesn't much care how it does its work as long as it conforms to her specifications; she doesn't need to look inside the box to use it in her design. The property of being a self-contained unit is called encapsulation. With encapsulation, we can accomplish data hiding. Data hiding is the highly valued characteristic that an object can be used without the user knowing or caring how it works internally. Just as you can use a refrigerator without knowing how the compressor works, you can use a well-designed object without knowing about its internal data members. Similarly, when the engineer uses the resistor, she need not know anything about the internal state of the resistor. All the properties of the resistor are encapsulated in the resistor object; they are not spread out through the circuitry. It is not necessary to understand how the resistor works in order to use it effectively. Its data is hidden inside the resistor's casing. C++ supports the properties of encapsulation and data hiding through the creation of user-defined types, called classes. You'll see how to create classes on Day 6, "Basic Classes." Once created, a welldefined class acts as a fully encapsulated entity--it is used as a whole unit. The actual inner workings of the class should be hidden. Users of a well-defined class do not need to know how the class works; they just need to know how to use it. Inheritance and Reuse When the engineers at Acme Motors want to build a new car, they have two choices: They can start from scratch, or they can modify an existing model. Perhaps their Star model is nearly perfect, but they'd like to add a turbocharger and a six-speed

transmission. The chief engineer would prefer not to start from the ground up, but rather to say, "Let's build another Star, but let's add these additional capabilities. We'll call the new model a Quasar." A Quasar is a kind of Star, but one with new features. C++ supports the idea of reuse through inheritance. A new type, which is an extension of an existing type, can be declared. This new subclass is said to derive from the existing type and is sometimes called a derived type. The Quasar is derived from the Star and thus inherits all its qualities, but can add to them as needed. Inheritance and its application in C++ are discussed on Day 12, "Inheritance," and Day 15, "Advanced Inheritance." Polymorphism The new Quasar might respond differently than a Star does when you press down on the accelerator. The Quasar might engage fuel injection and a turbocharger, while the Star would simply let gasoline into its carburetor. A user, however, does not have to know about these differences. He can just "floor it," and the right thing will happen, depending on which car he's driving. C++ supports the idea that different objects do "the right thing" through what is called function polymorphism and class polymorphism. Poly means many, and morph means form. Polymorphism refers to the same name taking many forms, and is discussed on Day 10, "Advanced Functions," and Day 13, "Polymorphism."

How C++ Evolved
As object-oriented analysis, design, and programming began to catch on, Bjarne Stroustrup took the most popular language for commercial software development, C, and extended it to provide the features needed to facilitate object-oriented programming. He created C++, and in less than a decade it has gone from being used by only a handful of developers at AT&T to being the programming language of choice for an estimated one million developers worldwide. It is expected that by the end of the decade, C++ will be the predominant language for commercial software development. While it is true that C++ is a superset of C, and that virtually any legal C program is a legal C++ program, the leap from C to C++ is very significant. C++ benefited from its relationship to C for many years, as C programmers could ease into their use of C++. To really get the full benefit of C++, however, many programmers found they had to unlearn much of what they knew and learn a whole new way of conceptualizing and solving programming problems.

The ANSI Standard
The Accredited Standards Committee, operating under the procedures of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is working to create an international standard for C++. The draft of this standard has been published, and a link is available at www.libertyassociates.com. The ANSI standard is an attempt to ensure that C++ is portable--that code you write for Microsoft's compiler will compile without errors, using a compiler from any other vendor. Further, because the

code in this book is ANSI compliant, it should compile without errors on a Mac, a Windows box, or an Alpha. For most students of C++, the ANSI standard will be invisible. The standard has been stable for a while, and all the major manufacturers support the ANSI standard. We have endeavored to ensure that all the code in this edition of this book is ANSI compliant.

Should I Learn C First?
The question inevitably arises: "Since C++ is a superset of C, should I learn C first?" Stroustrup and most other C++ programmers agree. Not only is it unnecessary to learn C first, it may be advantageous not to do so. This book attempts to meet the needs of people like you, who come to C++ without prior experience of C. In fact, this book assumes no programming experience of any kind.

Preparing to Program
C++, perhaps more than other languages, demands that the programmer design the program before writing it. Trivial problems, such as the ones discussed in the first few chapters of this book, don't require much design. Complex problems, however, such as the ones professional programmers are challenged with every day, do require design, and the more thorough the design, the more likely it is that the program will solve the problems it is designed to solve, on time and on budget. A good design also makes for a program that is relatively bug-free and easy to maintain. It has been estimated that fully 90 percent of the cost of software is the combined cost of debugging and maintenance. To the extent that good design can reduce those costs, it can have a significant impact on the bottom-line cost of the project. The first question you need to ask when preparing to design any program is, "What is the problem I'm trying to solve?" Every program should have a clear, well-articulated goal, and you'll find that even the simplest programs in this book do so. The second question every good programmer asks is, "Can this be accomplished without resorting to writing custom software?" Reusing an old program, using pen and paper, or buying software off the shelf is often a better solution to a problem than writing something new. The programmer who can offer these alternatives will never suffer from lack of work; finding less-expensive solutions to today's problems will always generate new opportunities later. Assuming you understand the problem, and it requires writing a new program, you are ready to begin your design.

Your Development Environment
This book makes the assumption that your computer has a mode in which you can write directly to the screen, without worrying about a graphical environment, such as the ones in Windows or on the Macintosh.

Your compiler may have its own built-in text editor, or you may be using a commercial text editor or word processor that can produce text files. The important thing is that whatever you write your program in, it must save simple, plain-text files, with no word processing commands embedded in the text. Examples of safe editors include Windows Notepad, the DOS Edit command, Brief, Epsilon, EMACS, and vi. Many commercial word processors, such as WordPerfect, Word, and dozens of others, also offer a method for saving simple text files. The files you create with your editor are called source files, and for C++ they typically are named with the extension .CPP, .CP, or .C. In this book, we'll name all the source code files with the .CPP extension, but check your compiler for what it needs.

NOTE: Most C++ compilers don't care what extension you give your source code, but if you don't specify otherwise, many will use .CPP by default. DO use a simple text editor to create your source code, or use the built-in editor that comes with your compiler. DON'T use a word processor that saves special formatting characters. If you do use a word processor, save the file as ASCII text. DO save your files with the .C, .CP, or .CPP extension. DO check your documentation for specifics about your compiler and linker to ensure that you know how to compile and link your programs.

Compiling the Source Code
Although the source code in your file is somewhat cryptic, and anyone who doesn't know C++ will struggle to understand what it is for, it is still in what we call human-readable form. Your source code file is not a program, and it can't be executed, or run, as a program can. To turn your source code into a program, you use a compiler. How you invoke your compiler, and how you tell it where to find your source code, will vary from compiler to compiler; check your documentation. In Borland's Turbo C++ you pick the RUN menu command or type tc from the command line, where is the name of your source code file (for example, test.cpp). Other compilers may do things slightly differently.

NOTE: If you compile the source code from the operating system's command line, you should type the following: For the Borland C++ compiler: bcc

For the Borland C++ for Windows compiler: bcc For the Borland Turbo C++ compiler: tc For the Microsoft compilers: cl

After your source code is compiled, an object file is produced. This file is often named with the extension .OBJ. This is still not an executable program, however. To turn this into an executable program, you must run your linker.

Creating an Executable File with the Linker
C++ programs are typically created by linking together one or more OBJ files with one or more libraries. A library is a collection of linkable files that were supplied with your compiler, that you purchased separately, or that you created and compiled. All C++ compilers come with a library of useful functions (or procedures) and classes that you can include in your program. A function is a block of code that performs a service, such as adding two numbers or printing to the screen. A class is a collection of data and related functions; we'll be talking about classes a lot, starting on Day 5, "Functions." The steps to create an executable file are 1. Create a source code file, with a .CPP extension. 2. Compile the source code into a file with the .OBJ extension. 3. Link your OBJ file with any needed libraries to produce an executable program.

The Development Cycle
If every program worked the first time you tried it, that would be the complete development cycle: Write the program, compile the source code, link the program, and run it. Unfortunately, almost every program, no matter how trivial, can and will have errors, or bugs, in the program. Some bugs will cause the compile to fail, some will cause the link to fail, and some will only show up when you run the program. Whatever type of bug you find, you must fix it, and that involves editing your source code, recompiling and relinking, and then rerunning the program. This cycle is represented in Figure 1.1, which diagrams the steps in the development cycle. Figure 1.1. The steps in the development of a C++ program.

HELLO.CPPYour First C++ Program
Traditional programming books begin by writing the words Hello World to the screen, or a variation on that statement. This time-honored tradition is carried on here. Type the first program directly into your editor, exactly as shown. Once you are certain it is correct, save the file, compile it, link it, and run it. It will print the words Hello World to your screen. Don't worry too much about how it works, this is really just to get you comfortable with the development cycle. Every aspect of this program will be covered over the next couple of days.

WARNING: The following listing contains line numbers on the left. These numbers are for reference within the book. They should not be typed in to your editor. For example, in line 1 of Listing 1.1, you should enter: #include

Listing 1.1. HELLO.CPP, the Hello World program.
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: #include int main() { cout y; 12: cout y) 15: z = x; 16: else 17: z = y; 18: 19: cout TempFer; TempCel = Convert(TempFer); cout myInt; cout > myLong; cout > myDouble; cout > myFloat; cout > myWord; cout > myUnsigned; cout cout cout cout cout cout >myVarOne >> myVarTwo; // illegal

The return value of (cin.get() >> myVarOne) is an integer, not an iostream object. A common use of get() with no parameters is illustrated in Listing 16.4.

Listing 16.4. Using get() with no parameters.
1: 2: 3: 4: 5: 6: 7: 8: 9: 10: 11: 12: 13: } // Listing 16.4 - Using get() with no parameters #include int main() { char ch; while ( (ch = cin.get()) != EOF) { cout fileName; 8: 9: ifstream fin(fileName); 10: if (fin) // already exists? 11: { 12: cout