C

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 properly follow the tutorials, a
recent compiler is needed. It shall support (even if only partially) the features introduced by
the 2011 standard.
Many compiler vendors support the new features at different degrees. See the bottom of this
page for some compilers that are known to support the features needed. Some of them are
free!
If for some reason, you need to use some older compiler, you can access an older version of
these tutorials here (no longer updated).
What is a compiler?
Computers understand only one language and that language consists of sets of instructions
made of ones and zeros. This computer language is appropriately called machine language.
A single instruction to a computer could look like this:
00000
10011110
A particular computer's machine language program that allows a user to input two numbers,
adds the two numbers together, and displays the total could include these machine code
instructions:
00000
00001
00010
00011
00100
00101
10011110
11110100
10011110
11010100
10111111
00000000
As you can imagine, programming a computer directly in machine language using only ones
and zeros is very tedious and error prone. To make programming easier, high level languages
have been developed. High level programs also make it easier for programmers to inspect and
understand each other's programs easier.
This is a portion of code written in C++ that accomplishes the exact same purpose:
1 int
2
3 cin
4 cin
5
6 sum
a, b, sum;
>> a;
>> b;
= a + b;
7 cout << sum << endl;
Even if you cannot really understand the code above, you should be able to appreciate how
much easier it will be to program in the C++ language as opposed to machine language.
Because a computer can only understand machine language and humans wish to write in high
level languages high level languages have to be re-written (translated) into machine language
at some point. This is done by special programs called compilers, interpreters, or assemblers
that are built into the various programming applications.
C++ is designed to be a compiled language, meaning that it is generally translated into
machine language that can be understood directly by the system, making the generated
program highly efficient. For that, a set of tools are needed, known as the development
toolchain, whose core are a compiler and its linker.
Console programs
Console programs are programs that use text to communicate with the user and the
environment, such as printing text to the screen or reading input from a keyboard.
Console programs are easy to interact with, and generally have a predictable behavior that is
identical across all platforms. They are also simple to implement and thus are very useful to
learn the basics of a programming language: The examples in these tutorials are all console
programs.
The way to compile console programs depends on the particular tool you are using.
The easiest way for beginners to compile C++ programs is by using an Integrated
Development Environment (IDE). An IDE generally integrates several development tools,
including a text editor and tools to compile programs directly from it.
Here you have instructions on how to compile and run console programs using different free
Integrated Development Interfaces (IDEs):
IDE
Code::blocks
Visual Studio
Express
Dev-C++
Platform
Console programs
Windows/Linux/MacO Compile console programs using
S
Code::blocks
Compile console programs using VS
Windows
Express 2013
Windows
Compile console programs using Dev-C++
If you happen to have a Linux or Mac environment with development features, you should be
able to compile any of the examples directly from a terminal just by including C++11 flags in
the command for the compiler:
Compile
Platform
r
GCC
Linux, among
Command
g++ -std=c++0x example.cpp -o example_program
Clang
others...
OS X, among
others...
clang++ -std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ example.cpp -o

example_program
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 // my first program in C++
2 #include <iostream>
3
4 int main()
5{
6 std::cout << "Hello World!";
7}
Hello World!
Edit & Run
The left panel above shows the C++ code for this program. The right panel shows the result
when the program is executed by a computer. The grey numbers to the left of the panels are
line numbers to make discussing programs and researching errors easier. They are not part of
the program.
Let's examine this program line by line:
Line 1: // my first program in C++
Two slash signs indicate that the rest of the line is a comment inserted by the
programmer but which has no effect on the behavior of the program. Programmers
use them to include short explanations or observations concerning the code or
program. In this case, it is a brief introductory description of the program.
Line 2: #include <iostream>
Lines beginning with a hash sign (#) are directives read and interpreted by what is
known as the preprocessor. They are special lines interpreted before the compilation
of the program itself begins. In this case, the directive#include <iostream>,
instructs the preprocessor to include a section of standard C++ code, known as header
iostream, that allows to perform standard input and output operations, such as writing
the output of this program (Hello World) to the screen.
Line 3: A blank line.
Blank lines have no effect on a program. They simply improve readability of the code.
Line 4: int main ()
This line initiates the declaration of a function. Essentially, a function is a group of
code statements which are given a name: in this case, this gives the name "main" to
the group of code statements that follow. Functions will be discussed in detail in a
later chapter, but essentially, their definition is introduced with a succession of a type
(int), a name (main) and a pair of parentheses (()), optionally including parameters.
The function named main is a special function in all C++ programs; it is the function
called when the program is run. The execution of all C++ programs begins with
the main function, regardless of where the function is actually located within the code.
Lines 5 and 7: { and }
The open brace ({) at line 5 indicates the beginning of main's function definition, and
the closing brace (}) at line 7, indicates its end. Everything between these braces is
the function's body that defines what happens when main is called. All functions use
braces to indicate the beginning and end of their definitions.
Line 6: std::cout << "Hello World!";
This line is a C++ statement. A statement is an expression that can actually produce
some effect. It is the meat of a program, specifying its actual behavior. Statements are
executed in the same order that they appear within a function's body.
This statement has three parts: First, std::cout, which identifies
the standard character output device (usually, this is the computer screen). Second,
the insertion operator (<<), which indicates that what follows is inserted
intostd::cout. Finally, a sentence within quotes ("Hello world!"), is the content
inserted into the standard output.
Notice that the statement ends with a semicolon (;). This character marks the end of
the statement, just as the period ends a sentence in English. All C++ statements must
end with a semicolon character. One of the most common syntax errors in C++ is
forgetting to end a statement with a semicolon.
You may have noticed that not all the lines of this program perform actions when the code is
executed. There is a line containing a comment (beginning with //). There is a line with a
directive for the preprocessor (beginning with #). There is a line that defines a function (in
this case, the main function). And, finally, a line with a statements ending with a semicolon
(the insertion into cout), which was within the block delimited by the braces ( { } ) of
the main function.
The program has been structured in different lines and properly indented, in order to make it
easier to understand for the humans reading it. But C++ does not have strict rules on
indentation or on how to split instructions in different lines. For example, instead of
1 int main ()
2{
3 std::cout << " Hello World!";
4}
Edit & Run
We could have written:

int main () { std::cout << "Hello World!"; }
Edit & Run
all in a single line, and this would have had exactly the same meaning as the preceding code.
In C++, the separation between statements is specified with an ending semicolon (;), with the
separation into different lines not mattering at all for this purpose. Many statements can be
written in a single line, or each statement can be in its own line. The division of code in
different lines serves only to make it more legible and schematic for the humans that may
read it, but has no effect on the actual behavior of the program.
Now, let's add an additional statement to our first program:
1 // my second program in C++
3
4 int main ()
5{
6 std::cout << "Hello World! ";
7 std::cout << "I'm a C++
8 program";
}
Hello World! I'm a C++

program
Edit & Run
In this case, the program performed two insertions into std::cout in two different
statements. Once again, the separation in different lines of code simply gives greater
readability to the program, since main could have been perfectly valid defined in this way:
int main () { std::cout << " Hello World! "; std::cout << " I'm a Edit &
C++ program "; }
Run
The source code could have also been divided into more code lines instead:
1 int main ()
2{
3 std::cout <<
4
"Hello World!";
5 std::cout
6
<< "I'm a C++ program";
7}
Edit & Run
And the result would again have been exactly the same as in the previous examples.
Preprocessor directives (those that begin by #) are out of this general rule since they are not
statements. They are lines read and processed by the preprocessor before proper compilation
begins. Preprocessor directives must be specified in their own line and, because they are not
statements, do not have to end with a semicolon (;).
Comments
As noted above, comments do not affect the operation of the program; however, they provide
an important tool to document directly within the source code what the program does and
how it operates.
C++ supports two ways of commenting code:

1 // line comment
2 /* block comment */
The first of them, known as line comment, discards everything from where the pair of slash
signs (//) are found up to the end of that same line. The second one, known as block
comment, discards everything between the /* characters and the first appearance of
the */ characters, with the possibility of including multiple lines.
Let's add comments to our second program:
1 /* my second program in C++
2
with more comments */
3
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 std::cout << "Hello World! ";
//
9 prints Hello World!
10 std::cout << "I'm a C++ program"; //
prints I'm a C++ program
}
Hello World! I'm a C+ Edit &

+ program
Run
If comments are included within the source code of a program without using the comment
characters combinations //,/* or */, the compiler takes them as if they were C++
expressions, most likely causing the compilation to fail with one, or several, error messages.
Using namespace std

If you have seen C++ code before, you may have seen cout being used instead
of std::cout. Both name the same object: the first one uses its unqualified name (cout),
while the second qualifies it directly within the namespace std (asstd::cout).
is part of the standard library, and all the elements in the standard C++ library are
declared within what is a called anamespace: the namespace std.
cout
In order to refer to the elements in the std namespace a program shall either qualify each and
every use of elements of the library (as we have done by prefixing cout with std::), or
introduce visibility of its components. The most typical way to introduce visibility of these
components is by means of using declarations:
using namespace std;
The above declaration allows all elements in the std namespace to be accessed in
an unqualified manner (without thestd:: prefix).
With this in mind, the last example can be rewritten to make unqualified uses of cout as:
1 // my second program in C++
3 using namespace std;
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 cout << "Hello World! ";
8 cout << "I'm a C++ program";
9}
Hello World! I'm a C++ program
Edit & Run
Both ways of accessing the elements of the std namespace (explicit qualification
and using declarations) are valid in C++ and produce the exact same behavior. For simplicity,
and to improve readability, the examples in these tutorials will more often use this latter
approach with using declarations, although note that explicit qualification is the only way to
guarantee that name collisions never happen.
Namespaces are explained in more detail in a later chapter.
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 sentence ourselves.
However, programming is not limited only to printing simple texts on the screen. In order to
go a little further on and to become able to write programs that perform useful tasks that
really save us work, we need to introduce the concept ofvariable.
Let's imagine that I ask you to remember the number 5, and then I ask you to also memorize
the number 2 at the same time. You have just stored two different values in your memory (5
and 2). Now, if I ask you to add 1 to the first number I said, you should be retaining the
numbers 6 (that is 5+1) and 2 in your memory. Then we could, for example, subtract these
values and obtain 4 as result.
The whole process described above is a simile of what a computer can do with two variables.
The same process can be expressed in C++ with the following set of statements:
1 a = 5;
2 b = 2;
3 a = a + 1;
4 result = a - b;
Obviously, this is a very simple example, since we have only used two small integer values,
but consider that your computer can store millions of numbers like these at the same time and
conduct sophisticated mathematical operations with them.

We can now define variable as a portion of memory to store a value.
Each variable needs a name that identifies it and distinguishes it from the others. For
example, in the previous code the variable names were a, b, and result, but we could have
called the variables any names we could have come up with, as long as they were valid C++
identifiers.
Identifiers
A valid identifier is a sequence of one or more letters, digits, or underscore characters (_).
Spaces, punctuation marks, and symbols cannot be part of an identifier. In addition,
identifiers shall always begin with a letter. They can also begin with an underline character
(_), but such identifiers are -on most cases- considered reserved for compiler-specific
keywords or external identifiers, as well as identifiers containing two successive underscore
characters anywhere. In no case can they begin with a digit.
C++ uses a number of keywords to identify operations and data descriptions; therefore,
identifiers created by a programmer cannot match these keywords. The standard reserved
keywords that cannot be used for programmer created identifiers are:
alignas, alignof, and, and_eq, asm, auto, bitand, bitor, bool, break, case,
catch, char, char16_t, char32_t, class, compl, const, constexpr,
const_cast, continue, decltype, default, delete, do, double, dynamic_cast,
else, enum, explicit, export, extern, false, float, for, friend, goto, if,
inline, int, long, mutable, namespace, new, noexcept, not, not_eq, nullptr,
operator, or, or_eq, private, protected, public, register,
reinterpret_cast, return, short, signed, sizeof, static, static_assert,
static_cast, struct, switch, template, this, thread_local, throw, true,
try, typedef, typeid, typename, union, unsigned, using, virtual, void,
volatile, wchar_t, while, xor, xor_eq
Specific compilers may also have additional specific reserved keywords.

Very important: The C++ language is a "case sensitive" language. That means that an
identifier written in capital letters is not equivalent to another one with the same name but
written in small letters. Thus, for example, the RESULTvariable is not the same as
the result variable or the Result variable. These are three different identifiers identifiying
three different variables.
Fundamental data types

The values of variables are stored somewhere in an unspecified location in the computer
memory as zeros and ones. Our program does not need to know the exact location where a
variable is stored; it can simply refer to it by its name. What the program needs to be aware of
is the kind of data stored in the variable. It's not the same to store a simple integer as it is to
store a letter or a large floating-point number; even though they are all represented using
zeros and ones, they are not interpreted in the same way, and in many cases, they don't
occupy the same amount of memory.

Fundamental data types are basic types implemented directly by the language that represent
the basic storage units supported natively by most systems. They can mainly be classified
into:
Character types: They can represent a single character, such as 'A' or '$'. The most
basic type is char, which is a one-byte character. Other types are also provided for
wider characters.
Numerical integer types: They can store a whole number value, such as 7 or 1024.
They exist in a variety of sizes, and can either be signed or unsigned, depending on
whether they support negative values or not.
Floating-point types: They can represent real values, such as 3.14 or 0.01, with
different levels of precision, depending on which of the three floating-point types is
used.
Boolean type: The boolean type, known in C++ as bool, can only represent one of
two states, true or false.
Here is the complete list of fundamental types in C++:

Group
Character types
char
Type names*
Notes on size / precision

Exactly one byte in size. At least 8 bits.
char16_t
Not smaller than char. At least 16 bits.
char32_t
wchar_t
Integer types
(signed)
Not smaller than char16_t. At least 32

bits.
Can represent the largest supported
character set.
signed char
Same size as char. At least 8 bits.
signed short int
Not smaller than char. At least 16 bits.
signed int
Not smaller than short. At least 16 bits.
signed long int
Not smaller than int. At least 32 bits.
signed long long int

unsigned char
Not smaller than long. At least 64 bits.
unsigned short int

Integer types
(unsigned)
unsigned int
Floating-point types
double
Precision not less than float
long double
Precision not less than double
bool
void
no storage
Boolean type
Void type
unsigned long int

unsigned long
long int
float
(same size as their signed counterparts)
Null pointer
decltype(nullptr)
* The names of certain integer types can be abbreviated without

their signed and int components - only the part not in italics is required to identify the type,
the part in italics is optional. I.e., signed short int can be abbreviated as signed
short, short int, or simply short; they all identify the same fundamental type.
Within each of the groups above, the difference between types is only their size (i.e., how
much they occupy in memory): the first type in each group is the smallest, and the last is the
largest, with each type being at least as large as the one preceding it in the same group. Other
than that, the types in a group have the same properties.
Note in the panel above that other than char (which has a size of exactly one byte), none of
the fundamental types has a standard size specified (but a minimum size, at most). Therefore,
the type is not required (and in many cases is not) exactly this minimum size. This does not
mean that these types are of an undetermined size, but that there is no standard size across all
compilers and machines; each compiler implementation may specify the sizes for these types
that fit the best the architecture where the program is going to run. This rather generic size
specification for types gives the C++ language a lot of flexibility to be adapted to work
optimally in all kinds of platforms, both present and future.
Type sizes above are expressed in bits; the more bits a type has, the more distinct values it
can represent, but at the same time, also consumes more space in memory:
Size
8-bit
16-bit
32-bit
64-bit
Unique representable values
Notes
256 = 2
65 536 = 216
4 294 967 296 = 232 (~4 billion)
18 446 744 073 709 551 616 = 264 (~18 billion billion)
8
For integer types, having more representable values means that the range of values they can
represent is greater; for example, a 16-bit unsigned integer would be able to represent 65536
distinct values in the range 0 to 65535, while its signed counterpart would be able to
represent, on most cases, values between -32768 and 32767. Note that the range of positive
values is approximately halved in signed types compared to unsigned types, due to the fact
that one of the 16 bits is used for the sign; this is a relatively modest difference in range, and
seldom justifies the use of unsigned types based purely on the range of positive values they
can represent.
For floating-point types, the size affects their precision, by having more or less bits for their
significant and exponent.
If the size or precision of the type is not a concern, then char, int, and double are typically
selected to represent characters, integers, and floating-point values, respectively. The other
types in their respective groups are only used in very particular cases.
The properties of fundamental types in a particular system and compiler implementation can
be obtained by using thenumeric_limits classes (see standard header <limits>). If for
some reason, types of specific sizes are needed, the library defines certain fixed-size type
aliases in header <cstdint>.

The types described above (characters, integers, floating-point, and boolean) are collectively
known as arithmetic types. But two additional fundamental types exist: void, which identifies
the lack of type; and the type nullptr, which is a special type of pointer. Both types will be
discussed further in a coming chapter about pointers.
C++ supports a wide variety of types based on the fundamental types discussed above; these
other types are known ascompound data types, and are one of the main strengths of the C++
language. We will also see them in more detail in future chapters.
Declaration of variables
C++ is a strongly-typed language, and requires every variable to be declared with its type
before its first use. This informs the compiler the size to reserve in memory for the variable
and how to interpret its value. The syntax to declare a new variable in C++ is straightforward:
we simply write the type followed by the variable name (i.e., its identifier). For example:
1 int a;
2 float mynumber;
These are two valid declarations of variables. The first one declares a variable of
type int with the identifier a. The second one declares a variable of type float with the
identifier mynumber. Once declared, the variables a and mynumber can be used within the rest
of their scope in the program.
If declaring more than one variable of the same type, they can all be declared in a single
statement by separating their identifiers with commas. For example:
int a, b, c;
This declares three variables (a, b and c), all of them of type int, and has exactly the same
meaning as:
1 int a;
2 int b;
3 int c;
To see what variable declarations look like in action within a program, let's have a look at the
entire C++ code of the example about your mental memory proposed at the beginning of this
chapter:
1 // operating with variables
2
5
6 int main ()
Edit & Run
7{
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23 }
// declaring variables:
int a, b;
int result;
// process:
a = 5;
b = 2;
a = a + 1;
result = a - b;
// print out the result:
cout << result;
// terminate the program:
return 0;
Don't be worried if something else than the variable declarations themselves look a bit
strange to you. Most of it will be explained in more detail in coming chapters.
Initialization of variables
When the variables in the example above are declared, they have an undetermined value until
they are assigned a value for the first time. But it is possible for a variable to have a specific
value from the moment it is declared. This is called theinitialization of the variable.
In C++, there are three ways to initialize variables. They are all equivalent and are
reminiscent of the evolution of the language over the years:
The first one, known as c-like initialization (because it is inherited from the C language),
consists of appending an equal sign followed by the value to which the variable is initialized:
type identifier = initial_value;
For example, to declare a variable of type int called x and initialize it to a value of zero from
the same moment it is declared, we can write:
int x = 0;
A second method, known as constructor initialization (introduced by the C++ language),

encloses the initial value between parentheses (()):
type identifier (initial_value);
For example:
int x (0);
Finally, a third method, known as uniform initialization, similar to the above, but using curly
braces ({}) instead of parentheses (this was introduced by the revision of the C++ standard,
in 2011):
type identifier {initial_value};
For example:
int x {0};
All three ways of initializing variables are valid and equivalent in C++.
1 // initialization of variables
2
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 int a=5;
// initial
9 int b(3);
// initial
10 int c{2};
// initial
11 int result;
// initial
12
13 a = a + b;
14 result = a - c;
15 cout << result;
16
17 return 0;
18 }
6 Edit & Run
value: 5
value: 3
value: 2
value undetermined
Type deduction: auto and decltype

When a new variable is initialized, the compiler can figure out what the type of the variable is
automatically by the initializer. For this, it suffices to use auto as the type specifier for the
variable:
1 int foo = 0;
2 auto bar = foo;
// the same as: int bar = foo;
Here, bar is declared as having an auto type; therefore, the type of bar is the type of the
value used to initialize it: in this case it uses the type of foo, which is int.
Variables that are not initialized can also make use of type deduction with
the decltype specifier:
1 int foo = 0;
2 decltype(foo) bar;
// the same as: int bar;
Here, bar is declared as having the same type as foo.
and decltype are powerful features recently added to the language. But the type
deduction features they introduce are meant to be used either when the type cannot be
obtained by other means or when using it improves code readability. The two examples above
were likely neither of these use cases. In fact they probably decreased readability, since, when
reading the code, one has to search for the type of foo to actually know the type of bar.
auto
Introduction to strings
Fundamental types represent the most basic types handled by the machines where the code
may run. But one of the major strengths of the C++ language is its rich set of compound
types, of which the fundamental types are mere building blocks.
An example of compound type is the string class. Variables of this type are able to store
sequences of characters, such as words or sentences. A very useful feature!
A first difference with fundamental data types is that in order to declare and use objects
(variables) of this type, the program needs to include the header where the type is defined
within the standard library (header <string>):
1 // my first string
3 #include <string>
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 string mystring;
9 mystring = "This is a string";
10 cout << mystring;
11 return 0;
12 }
This is a string
Edit & Run
As you can see in the previous example, strings can be initialized with any valid string literal,
just like numerical type variables can be initialized to any valid numerical literal. As with
fundamental types, all initialization formats are valid with strings:
1 string mystring = "This is a string";
2 string mystring ("This is a string");
3 string mystring {"This is a string"};
Strings can also perform all the other basic operations that fundamental data types can, like
being declared without an initial value and change its value during execution:
1 // my first string
3 #include <string>
5
6 int main ()
This is the initial string Edit &

content
Run
This is a different string
content
7{
8 string mystring;
9 mystring = "This
10 string content";
11 cout << mystring
12 mystring = "This
13 string content";
14 cout << mystring
return 0;
}
is the initial
<< endl;
is a different
<< endl;
Note: inserting the endl manipulator ends the line (printing a newline character and flushing
the stream).
The string class is a compound type. As you can see in the example above, compound
types are used in the same way asfundamental types: the same syntax is used to declare
variables and to initialize them.
For more details on standard C++ strings, see the string class reference.
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, for example, when we wrote:
a = 5;
The 5 in this piece of code was a literal constant.

Literal constants can be classified into: integer, floating-point, characters,
strings, Boolean, pointers, and user-defined literals.
Integer Numerals
1 1776
2 707
3 -273
These are numerical constants that identify integer values. Notice that they are
not enclosed in quotes or any other special character; they are a simple
succession of digits representing a whole number in decimal base; for
example, 1776always represents the value one thousand seven hundred seventysix.
In addition to decimal numbers (those that most of us use every day), C++
allows the use of octal numbers (base 8) and hexadecimal numbers (base 16) as
literal constants. For octal literals, the digits are preceded with a 0 (zero)
character. And for hexadecimal, they are preceded by the characters 0x (zero, x).
For example, the following literal constants are all equivalent to each other:
1 75
2 0113
3 0x4b
// decimal
// octal
// hexadecimal
All of these represent the same number: 75 (seventy-five) expressed as a base10 numeral, octal numeral and hexadecimal numeral, respectively.
These literal constants have a type, just like variables. By default, integer literals
are of type int. However, certain suffixes may be appended to an integer literal
to specify a different integer type:
Suffix
Type modifier
u or U
unsigned
l or L
long
ll or LL
long long
Unsigned may be combined with any of the other two in any order to
form unsigned long or unsigned long long.
For example:
1 75
2 75u
3 75l
4 75ul
5 75lu
//
//
//
//
//
int
unsigned int
long
unsigned long
unsigned long
In all the cases above, the suffix can be specified using either upper or lowercase
letters.
Floating Point Numerals
They express real values, with decimals and/or exponents. They can include
either a decimal point, an e character (that expresses "by ten at the Xth height",
where X is an integer value that follows the e character), or both a decimal point
and an e character:
1 3.14159
2 6.02e23
3 1.6e-19
4 3.0
//
//
//
//
3.14159
6.02 x 10^23
1.6 x 10^-19
3.0
These are four valid numbers with decimals expressed in C++. The first number
is PI, the second one is the number of Avogadro, the third is the electric charge of
an electron (an extremely small number) -all of them approximated-, and the last
one is the number three expressed as a floating-point numeric literal.
The default type for floating-point literals is double. Floating-point literals of
type float or long double can be specified by adding one of the following
suffixes:
Suffix
Type
f or F
float
l or L
long double
For example:
1 3.14159L
2 6.02e23f
// long double
// float
Any of the letters that can be part of a floating-point numerical constant ( e, f, l)

can be written using either lower or uppercase letters with no difference in
meaning.
Character and string literals
Character and string literals are enclosed in quotes:

1 'z'
2 'p'
3 "Hello world"
4 "How do you do?"
The first two expressions represent single-character literals, and the following
two represent string literals composed of several characters. Notice that to
represent a single character, we enclose it between single quotes ( '), and to
express a string (which generally consists of more than one character), we
enclose the characters between double quotes ( ").
Both single-character and string literals require quotation marks surrounding
them to distinguish them from possible variable identifiers or reserved keywords.
Notice the difference between these two expressions:
x
'x'
Here, x alone would refer to an identifier, such as the name of a variable or a

compound type, whereas 'x' (enclosed within single quotation marks) would
refer to the character literal 'x' (the character that represents a
lowercase x letter).
Character and string literals can also represent special characters that are
difficult or impossible to express otherwise in the source code of a program, like
newline (\n) or tab (\t). These special characters are all of them preceded by a
backslash character (\).
Here you have a list of the single character escape codes:
Escape code
Description
\n
Newline
\r
carriage return
\t
Tab
\v
vertical tab
\b
Backspace
\f
form feed (page feed)
\a
alert (beep)
\'
single quote (')
\"
double quote (")
\?
question mark (?)
\\
backslash (\)
For example:
'\n'
'\t'
"Left \t Right"
"one\ntwo\nthree"
Internally, computers represent characters as numerical codes: most typically,

they use one extension of the ASCIIcharacter encoding system (see ASCII
code for more info). Characters can also be represented in literals using its
numerical code by writing a backslash character (\) followed by the code
expressed as an octal (base-8) or hexadecimal (base-16) number. For an octal
value, the backslash is followed directly by the digits; while for hexadecimal,
an xcharacter is inserted between the backslash and the hexadecimal digits
themselves (for example: \x20 or \x4A).
Several string literals can be concatenated to form a single string literal simply
by separating them by one or more blank spaces, including tabs, newlines, and
other valid blank characters. For example:
1 "this forms" "a single"
2 "of characters"
" string "
The above is a string literal equivalent to:

"this formsa single string of characters"
Note how spaces within the quotes are part of the literal, while those outside
them are not.
Some programmers also use a trick to include long string literals in multiple
lines: In C++, a backslash (\) at the end of line is considered a linecontinuation character that merges both that line and the next into a single line.
Therefore the following code:
1 x = "string expressed in \
2 two lines"
is equivalent to:
x = "string expressed in two lines"
All the character literals and string literals described above are made of
characters of type char. A different character type can be specified by using one
of the following prefixes:
Prefix
Character type
char16_t
char32_t
wchar_t
Note that, unlike type suffixes for integer literals, these prefixes are case
sensitive: lowercase for char16_t and uppercase for char32_t and wchar_t.
For string literals, apart from the above u, U, and L, two additional prefixes exist:
Prefix
Description
u8
The string literal is encoded in the executable using UTF-8
The string literal is a raw string
In raw strings, backslashes and single and double quotes are all valid characters;
the content of the literal is delimited by an initial R"sequence( and a
final )sequence", where sequence is any sequence of characters (including an
empty sequence). The content of the string is what lies inside the parenthesis,
ignoring the delimiting sequence itself. For example:
1 R"(string with \backslash)"
2 R"&%$(string with \backslash)&%$"
Both strings above are equivalent to "string with \\backslash". The R prefix can
be combined with any other prefixes, such as u, L or u8.
Other literals
Three keyword literals exist in C++: true, false and nullptr:
true and false are the two possible values for variables of type bool.
nullptr is the null pointer value.
1 bool foo = true;

2 bool bar = false;
3 int* p = nullptr;
Typed constant expressions

Sometimes, it is just convenient to give a name to a constant value:
1 const double pi = 3.1415926;
2 const char tab = '\t';
We can then use these names instead of the literals they were defined to:
3
5 const char newline = '\n';
6
7 int main ()
8{
9 double r=5.0;
10 double circle;
11
12 circle = 2 * pi * r;
13 cout << circle;
14 cout << newline;
15 }
31.4159
Edit & Run
// radius
Preprocessor definitions (#define)

Another mechanism to name constant values is the use of preprocessor
definitions. They have the following form:
#define identifier replacement
After this directive, any occurrence of identifier in the code is interpreted

as replacement, where replacement is any sequence of characters (until the end
of the line). This replacement is performed by the preprocessor, and happens
before the program is compiled, thus causing a sort of blind replacement: the
validity of the types or syntax involved is not checked in any way.
For example:
3
4 #define PI 3.14159
5 #define NEWLINE '\n'
6
31.4159
Edit & Run
7 int main ()
8{
9 double r=5.0;
10 double circle;
11
12 circle = 2 * PI * r;
13 cout << circle;
14 cout << NEWLINE;
15
16 }
// radius
Note that the #define lines are preprocessor directives, and as such are singleline instructions that -unlike C++ statements- do not require semicolons (;) at
the end; the directive extends automatically until the end of the line. If a
semicolon is included in the line, it is part of the replacement sequence and is
also included in all replaced occurrences.
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 a value to a variable.
x = 5;
This statement assigns the integer value 5 to the variable x. The assignment operation always
takes place from right to left, and never the other way around:
x = y;
This statement assigns to variable x the value contained in variable y. The value of x at the
moment this statement is executed is lost and replaced by the value of y.
Consider also that we are only assigning the value of y to x at the moment of the assignment
operation. Therefore, if ychanges at a later moment, it will not affect the new value taken
by x.
For example, let's have a look at the following code - I have included the evolution of the
content stored in the variables as comments:
1 // assignment operator
a:4 b:7
Edit & Run

4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int a, b;
//
8 a = 10;
//
9 b = 4;
//
10 a = b;
//
11 b = 7;
//
12
13 cout << "a:";
14 cout << a;
15 cout << " b:";
16 cout << b;
17 }
a:?,
a:10,
a:10,
a:4,
a:4,
b:?
b:?
b:4
b:4
b:7
This program prints on screen the final values of a and b (4 and 7, respectively). Notice
how a was not affected by the final modification of b, even though we declared a = b earlier.
Assignment operations are expressions that can be evaluated. That means that the assignment
itself has a value, and -for fundamental types- this value is the one assigned in the operation.
For example:
y = 2 + (x = 5);
In this expression, y is assigned the result of adding 2 and the value of another assignment
expression (which has itself a value of 5). It is roughly equivalent to:
1 x = 5;
2 y = 2 + x;
With the final result of assigning 7 to y.

The following expression is also valid in C++:
x = y = z = 5;
It assigns 5 to the all three variables: x, y and z; always from right-to-left.
Arithmetic operators ( +, -, *, /, % )
The five arithmetical operations supported by C++ are:
operator
+
*
description
addition
subtraction
multiplication
division
modulo
/
%
Operations of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division correspond literally to their

respective mathematical operators. The last one, modulo operator, represented by a
percentage sign (%), gives the remainder of a division of two values. For example:
x = 11 % 3;
results in variable x containing the value 2, since dividing 11 by 3 results in 3, with a

remainder of 2.
Compound assignment (+=, -=, *=, /=, %=, >>=, <<=, &=, ^=, |=)
Compound assignment operators modify the current value of a variable by performing an
operation on it. They are equivalent to assigning the result of an operation to the first
operand:
expression
y += x;
x -= 5;
x /= y;
price *= units + 1;
y = y
x = x
x = x
price
+
/
=
equivalent to...
x;
5;
y;
price * (units+1);
and the same for all other compound assignment operators. For example:
1 // compound assignment operators
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int a, b=3;
8 a = b;
9 a+=2;
// equivalent to a=a+2
10 cout << a;
11 }
5 Edit & Run
Increment and decrement (++, --)

Some expression can be shortened even more: the increase operator (++) and the decrease
operator (--) increase or reduce by one the value stored in a variable. They are equivalent
to +=1 and to -=1, respectively. Thus:
1 ++x;
2 x+=1;
3 x=x+1;
are all equivalent in its functionality; the three of them increase by one the value of x.
In the early C compilers, the three previous expressions may have produced different
executable code depending on which one was used. Nowadays, this type of code optimization
is generally performed automatically by the compiler, thus the three expressions should
produce exactly the same executable code.
A peculiarity of this operator is that it can be used both as a prefix and as a suffix. That means
that it can be written either before the variable name (++x) or after it (x++). Although in
simple expressions like x++ or ++x, both have exactly the same meaning; in other expressions
in which the result of the increment or decrement operation is evaluated, they may have an
important difference in their meaning: In the case that the increase operator is used as a prefix
(++x) of the value, the expression evaluates to the final value of x, once it is already
increased. On the other hand, in case that it is used as a suffix (x++), the value is also
increased, but the expression evaluates to the value that x had before being increased. Notice
the difference:
Example 1
x = 3;
y = ++x;
// x contains 4, y contains 4
Example 2
x = 3;
y = x++;
// x contains 4, y contains 3
In Example 1, the value assigned to y is the value of x after being increased. While
in Example 2, it is the value x had before being increased.
Relational and comparison operators ( ==, !=, >, <, >=, <= )
Two expressions can be compared using relational and equality operators. For example, to
know if two values are equal or if one is greater than the other.
The result of such an operation is either true or false (i.e., a Boolean value).
The relational operators in C++ are:
operator
description
Equal to
Not equal to
Less than
Greater than
Less than or equal to
Greater than or equal to
==
!=
<
>
<=
>=
Here there are some examples:

1 (7 == 5)
2 (5 > 4)
3 (3 != 2)
// evaluates to false
// evaluates to true
4 (6 >= 6)
5 (5 < 5)
// evaluates to false
Of course, it's not just numeric constants that can be compared, but just any value, including,
of course, variables. Suppose that a=2, b=3 and c=6, then:
1 (a == 5)
2 (a*b >= c)
3 (b+4 > a*c)
4 ((b=2) == a)
//
//
//
//
evaluates
evaluates
evaluates
evaluates
to
to
to
to
false, since a is not equal to 5

true, since (2*3 >= 6) is true
false, since (3+4 > 2*6) is false
true
Be careful! The assignment operator (operator =, with one equal sign) is not the same as the
equality comparison operator (operator ==, with two equal signs); the first one (=) assigns the
value on the right-hand to the variable on its left, while the other (==) compares whether the
values on both sides of the operator are equal. Therefore, in the last expression ((b=2) == a),
we first assigned the value 2 to b and then we compared it to a (that also stores the value 2),
yielding true.
Logical operators ( !, &&, || )

The operator ! is the C++ operator for the Boolean operation NOT. It has only one operand,
to its right, and inverts it, producing false if its operand is true, and true if its operand
is false. Basically, it returns the opposite Boolean value of evaluating its operand. For
example:
1 !(5 == 5)
//
2 == 5) is true
3 !(6 <= 4)
//
4 !true
//
!false
//
evaluates to false because the expression at its right (5

evaluates to true because (6 <= 4) would be false
evaluates to false
evaluates to true
The logical operators && and || are used when evaluating two expressions to obtain a single
relational result. The operator&& corresponds to the Boolean logical operation AND, which
yields true if both its operands are true, and false otherwise. The following panel shows
the result of operator && evaluating the expression a&&b:
a
true
true
false
false
&& OPERATOR (and)

b
true
true
false
false
true
false
false
false
a && b
The operator || corresponds to the Boolean logical operation OR, which yields true if either
of its operands is true, thus being false only when both operands are false. Here are the
possible results of a||b:
|| OPERATOR (or)
b
a
true
true
false
false
true
false
true
false
a || b
True
True
True
False
For example:
1 ( (5 == 5) && (3 > 6) )
2 ( (5 == 5) || (3 > 6) )
// evaluates to false ( true && false )

// evaluates to true ( true || false )
When using the logical operators, C++ only evaluates what is necessary from left to right to
come up with the combined relational result, ignoring the rest. Therefore, in the last example
((5==5)||(3>6)), C++ evaluates first whether 5==5 istrue, and if so, it never checks
whether 3>6 is true or not. This is known as short-circuit evaluation, and works like this for
these operators:
operato
r
&&
||
short-circuit
if the left-hand side expression is false, the combined result is false (the
right-hand side expression is never evaluated).
if the left-hand side expression is true, the combined result is true (the righthand side expression is never evaluated).
This is mostly important when the right-hand expression has side effects, such as altering
values:
if ( (i<10) && (++i<n) ) { /*...*/ }
increments i
// note that the condition
Here, the combined conditional expression would increase i by one, but only if the condition
on the left of && is true, because otherwise, the condition on the right-hand side (++i<n) is
never evaluated.
Conditional ternary operator ( ? )

The conditional operator evaluates an expression, returning one value if that expression
evaluates to true, and a different one if the expression evaluates as false. Its syntax is:
condition ? result1 : result2
If condition is true, the entire expression evaluates to result1, and otherwise to result2.
1 7==5 ? 4 : 3
2 7==5+2 ? 4 : 3
3 5>3 ? a : b
4 3.
a>b ? a : b
// evaluates to 3, since 7 is not equal to 5.

// evaluates to 4, since 7 is equal to 5+2.
// evaluates to the value of a, since 5 is greater than
// evaluates to whichever is greater, a or b.
For example:
1 // conditional operator
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int a,b,c;
8
9 a=2;
10 b=7;
11 c = (a>b) ? a : b;
12
13 cout << c << '\n';
14 }
Edit & Run
In this example, a was 2, and b was 7, so the expression being evaluated (a>b) was not true,
thus the first value specified after the question mark was discarded in favor of the second
value (the one after the colon) which was b (with a value of 7).
Comma operator ( , )
The comma operator (,) is used to separate two or more expressions that are included where
only one expression is expected. When the set of expressions has to be evaluated for a value,
only the right-most expression is considered.
For example, the following code:
a = (b=3, b+2);
would first assign the value 3 to b, and then assign b+2 to variable a. So, at the end,
variable a would contain the value 5 while variable b would contain value 3.
Bitwise operators ( &, |, ^, ~, <<, >> )

Bitwise operators modify variables considering the bit patterns that represent the values they
store.
operator
&
|
^
~
<<
>>
asm equivalent
AND
OR
XOR
NOT
SHL
SHR
description
Bitwise AND
Bitwise inclusive OR
Bitwise exclusive OR
Unary complement (bit inversion)
Shift bits left
Shift bits right
Explicit type casting operator

Type casting operators allow to convert a value of a given type to another type. There are
several ways to do this in C++. The simplest one, which has been inherited from the C
language, is to precede the expression to be converted by the new type enclosed between
parentheses (()):
1 int i;
2 float f = 3.14;
3 i = (int) f;
The previous code converts the floating-point number 3.14 to an integer value (3); the
remainder is lost. Here, the typecasting operator was (int). Another way to do the same
thing in C++ is to use the functional notation preceding the expression to be converted by the
type and enclosing the expression between parentheses:
i = int (f);
Both ways of casting types are valid in C++.
sizeof
This operator accepts one parameter, which can be either a type or a variable, and returns the
size in bytes of that type or object:
x = sizeof (char);
Here, x is assigned the value 1, because char is a type with a size of one byte.
The value returned by sizeof is a compile-time constant, so it is always determined before
program execution.
Other operators
Later in these tutorials, we will see a few more operators, like the ones referring to pointers or
the specifics for object-oriented programming.
Precedence of operators
A single expression may have multiple operators. For example:
x = 5 + 7 % 2;
In C++, the above expression always assigns 6 to variable x, because the % operator has a
higher precedence than the +operator, and is always evaluated before. Parts of the expressions
can be enclosed in parenthesis to override this precedence order, or to make explicitly clear
the intended effect. Notice the difference:
1 x = 5 + (7 % 2);
2 x = (5 + 7) % 2;
// x = 6 (same as without parenthesis)

// x = 0
From greatest to smallest priority, C++ operators are evaluated in the following order:
Leve
l
1
Precedence group
Scope
Operator
::
++ -()
[]
. ->
++ -~ !
+ & *
new delete
sizeof
(type)
Postfix (unary)
Prefix (unary)
Pointer-to-member
.* ->*
Arithmetic: scaling
* / %
Arithmetic: addition
+ -
Bitwise shift
<< >>
Relational
< > <= >=
Equality
== !=
10
And
&
11
Exclusive or
12
Inclusive or
13
Conjunction
&&
14
Disjunction
||
Description
scope qualifier
Grouping
Left-toright
postfix increment /
decrement
Left-tofunctional forms
right
subscript
member access
prefix increment / decrement
bitwise NOT / logical NOT
unary prefix
Right-toreference / dereference
left
allocation / deallocation
parameter pack
C-style type-casting
Left-toaccess pointer
right
Left-tomultiply, divide, modulo
right
Left-toaddition, subtraction
right
Left-toshift left, shift right
right
Left-tocomparison operators
right
Left-toequality / inequality
right
Left-tobitwise AND
right
Left-tobitwise XOR
right
Left-tobitwise OR
right
Left-tological AND
right
Left-tological OR
right
15
Assignment-level
expressions
= *= /= %= +=
-=
assignment / compound
>>= <<= &= ^= assignment
|=
?:
conditional operator
16
Sequencing
comma separator
Right-toleft
Left-toright
When an expression has two operators with the same precedence level, grouping determines
which one is evaluated first: either left-to-right or right-to-left.
Enclosing all sub-statements in parentheses (even those unnecessary because of their
precedence) improves code readability.
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++ uses a convenient abstraction called streams to perform input and output operations in
sequential media such as the screen, the keyboard or a file. A stream is an entity where a
program can either insert or extract characters to/from. There is no need to know details about
the media associated to the stream or any of its internal specifications. All we need to know is
that streams are a source/destination of characters, and that these characters are
provided/accepted sequentially (i.e., one after another).
The standard library defines a handful of stream objects that can be used to access what are
considered the standard sources and destinations of characters by the environment where the
program runs:
stream
cin
cout
cerr
clog
description
standard
standard
standard
standard
input stream
output stream
error (output) stream
logging (output) stream
We are going to see in more detail only cout and cin (the standard output and input
streams); cerr and clog are also output streams, so they essentially work like cout, with the
only difference being that they identify streams for specific purposes: error messages and
logging; which, in many cases, in most environment setups, they actually do the exact same
thing: they print on screen, although they can also be individually redirected.
Standard output (cout)
On most program environments, the standard output by default is the screen, and the C++
stream object defined to access it is cout.
For formatted output operations, cout is used together with the insertion operator, which is
written as << (i.e., two "less than" signs).
1 cout << "Output sentence"; // prints Output sentence on screen
2 cout << 120;
// prints number 120 on screen
3 cout << x;
// prints the value of x on screen
The << operator inserts the data that follows it into the stream that precedes it. In the
examples above, it inserted the literal string Output sentence, the number 120, and the
value of variable x into the standard output stream cout. Notice that the sentence in the first
statement is enclosed in double quotes (") because it is a string literal, while in the last
one,x is not. The double quoting is what makes the difference; when the text is enclosed
between them, the text is printed literally; when they are not, the text is interpreted as the
identifier of a variable, and its value is printed instead. For example, these two sentences have
very different results:
1 cout << "Hello";
2 cout << Hello;
// prints Hello
// prints the content of variable Hello
Multiple insertion operations (<<) may be chained in a single statement:

cout << "This " << " is a " << "single C++ statement";
This last statement would print the text This is a single C++ statement. Chaining
insertions is especially useful to mix literals and variables in a single statement:
cout << "I am " << age << " years old and my zipcode is " << zipcode;
Assuming the age variable contains the value 24 and the zipcode variable contains 90064, the
output of the previous statement would be:
I am 24 years old and my zipcode is 90064
What cout does not do automatically is add line breaks at the end, unless instructed to do so.
For example, take the following two statements inserting into cout:
cout << "This is a sentence.";
cout << "This is another sentence.";
The output would be in a single line, without any line breaks in between. Something like:
This is a sentence.This is another sentence.
To insert a line break, a new-line character shall be inserted at the exact position the line
should be broken. In C++, a new-line character can be specified as \n (i.e., a backslash
character followed by a lowercase n). For example:
1 cout << "First sentence.\n";

2 cout << "Second sentence.\nThird sentence.";
This produces the following output:

First sentence.
Second sentence.
Third sentence.
Alternatively, the endl manipulator can also be used to break lines. For example:
1 cout << "First sentence." << endl;
2 cout << "Second sentence." << endl;
This would print:

First sentence.
Second sentence.
The endl manipulator produces a newline character, exactly as the insertion of '\n' does;
but it also has an additional behavior: the stream's buffer (if any) is flushed, which means that
the output is requested to be physically written to the device, if it wasn't already. This affects
mainly fully buffered streams, and cout is (generally) not a fully buffered stream. Still, it is
generally a good idea to use endl only when flushing the stream would be a feature
and '\n' when it would not. Bear in mind that a flushing operation incurs a certain overhead,
and on some devices it may produce a delay.
Standard input (cin)

In most program environments, the standard input by default is the keyboard, and the C++
stream object defined to access it is cin.
For formatted input operations, cin is used together with the extraction operator, which is
written as >> (i.e., two "greater than" signs). This operator is then followed by the variable
where the extracted data is stored. For example:
1 int age;
2 cin >> age;
The first statement declares a variable of type int called age, and the second extracts
from cin a value to be stored in it. This operation makes the program wait for input
from cin; generally, this means that the program will wait for the user to enter some
sequence with the keyboard. In this case, note that the characters introduced using the
keyboard are only transmitted to the program when the ENTER (or RETURN) key is pressed.
Once the statement with the extraction operation on cin is reached, the program will wait for
as long as needed until some input is introduced.
The extraction operation on cin uses the type of the variable after the >> operator to
determine how it interprets the characters read from the input; if it is an integer, the format
expected is a series of digits, if a string a sequence of characters, etc.
1 // i/o example
Please enter an integer value:
Edit &
2
702
Run
The value you entered is 702 and
its double is 1404.
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 int i;
9 cout << "Please enter an
10 integer value: ";
11 cin >> i;
12 cout << "The value you entered
13 is " << i;
14 cout << " and its double is "
<< i*2 << ".\n";
return 0;
}
As you can see, extracting from cin seems to make the task of getting input from the
standard input pretty simple and straightforward. But this method also has a big drawback.
What happens in the example above if the user enters something else that cannot be
interpreted as an integer? Well, in this case, the extraction operation fails. And this, by
default, lets the program continue without setting a value for variable i, producing
undetermined results if the value of iis used later.
This is very poor program behavior. Most programs are expected to behave in an expected
manner no matter what the user types, handling invalid values appropriately. Only very
simple programs should rely on values extracted directly fromcin without further checking.
A little later we will see how stringstreams can be used to have better control over user input.
Extractions on cin can also be chained to request more than one datum in a single statement:
cin >> a >> b;
This is equivalent to:

1 cin >> a;
2 cin >> b;
In both cases, the user is expected to introduce two values, one for variable a, and another for
variable b. Any kind of space is used to separate two consecutive input operations; this may
either be a space, a tab, or a new-line character.
cin and strings
The extraction operator can be used on cin to get strings of characters in the same way as
with fundamental data types:
1 string mystring;
2 cin >> mystring;
However, cin extraction always considers spaces (whitespaces, tabs, new-line...) as

terminating the value being extracted, and thus extracting a string means to always extract a
single word, not a phrase or an entire sentence.
To get an entire line from cin, there exists a function, called getline, that takes the stream
(cin) as first argument, and the string variable as second. For example:
1 // cin with strings
What's your name? Homer Simpson Edit &
Hello Homer Simpson.
Run
3 #include <string>
What is your favorite team? The
Isotopes
5
I like The Isotopes too!
6 int main ()
7{
8 string mystr;
9 cout << "What's your name? ";
10 getline (cin, mystr);
11 cout << "Hello " << mystr <<
12 ".\n";
13 cout << "What is your favorite
14 team? ";
16 cout << "I like " << mystr << "
too!\n";
return 0;
}
Notice how in both calls to getline, we used the same string identifier (mystr). What the
program does in the second call is simply replace the previous content with the new one that
is introduced.
The standard behavior that most users expect from a console program is that each time the
program queries the user for input, the user introduces the field, and then
presses ENTER (or RETURN). That is to say, input is generally expected to happen in terms of
lines on console programs, and this can be achieved by using getline to obtain input from
the user. Therefore, unless you have a strong reason not to, you should always use getline to
get input in your console programs instead of extracting from cin.
stringstream
The standard header <sstream> defines a type called stringstream that allows a string to be
treated as a stream, and thus allowing extraction or insertion operations from/to strings in the
same way as they are performed on cin and cout. This feature is most useful to convert
strings to numerical values and vice versa. For example, in order to extract an integer from a
string we can write:
1 string mystr ("1204");
2 int myint;
3 stringstream(mystr) >> myint;
This declares a string with initialized to a value of "1204", and a variable of type int.
Then, the third line uses this variable to extract from a stringstream constructed from the
string. This piece of code stores the numerical value 1204 in the variable called myint.
1 // stringstreams
3 #include <string>
4 #include <sstream>
6
7 int main ()
8{
9 string mystr;
10 float price=0;
11 int quantity=0;
12
13 cout << "Enter price: ";
14 getline (cin,mystr);
15 stringstream(mystr) >> price;
16 cout << "Enter quantity: ";
18 stringstream(mystr) >> quantity;
19 cout << "Total price: " << price*quantity <<
20 endl;
21 return 0;
}
Enter price:
Edit &
22.25
Run
Enter quantity: 7
Total price:
155.75
In this example, we acquire numeric values from the standard input indirectly: Instead of
extracting numeric values directly from cin, we get lines from it into a string object (mystr),
and then we extract the values from this string into the variables price and quantity. Once
these are numerical values, arithmetic operations can be performed on them, such as
multiplying them to obtain a total price.
With this approach of getting entire lines and extracting their contents, we separate the
process of getting user input from its interpretation as data, allowing the input process to be
what the user expects, and at the same time gaining more control over the transformation of
its content into useful data by the program.
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. During its
process, a program may repeat segments of code, or take decisions and
bifurcate. For that purpose, C++ provides flow control statements that serve to
specify what has to be done by our program, when, and under which
circumstances.
Many of the flow control statements explained in this section require a generic
(sub)statement as part of its syntax. This statement may either be a simple C++
statement, -such as a single instruction, terminated with a semicolon ( ;) - or a
compound statement. A compound statement is a group of statements (each of
them terminated by its own semicolon), but all grouped together in a block,
enclosed in curly braces: {}:
{ statement1; statement2; statement3; }
The entire block is considered a single statement (composed itself of multiple

substatements). Whenever a generic statement is part of the syntax of a flow
control statement, this can either be a simple statement or a compound
statement.
Selection statements: if and else

The if keyword is used to execute a statement or block, if, and only if, a
condition is fulfilled. Its syntax is:
if (condition) statement
Here, condition is the expression that is being evaluated. If this condition is

true, statement is executed. If it is false,statement is not executed (it is simply
ignored), and the program continues right after the entire selection statement.
For example, the following code fragment prints the message (x is 100), only if
the value stored in the x variable is indeed 100:
1 if (x == 100)
2 cout << "x is 100";
If x is not exactly 100, this statement is ignored, and nothing is printed.

If you want to include more than a single statement to be executed when the
condition is fulfilled, these statements shall be enclosed in braces ( {}), forming a

block:
1 if (x == 100)
2{
3
cout << "x is ";
4
cout << x;
5}
As usual, indentation and line breaks in the code have no effect, so the above
code is equivalent to:
if (x == 100) { cout << "x is "; cout << x; }
Selection statements with if can also specify what happens when the condition
is not fulfilled, by using the else keyword to introduce an alternative statement.
Its syntax is:
if (condition) statement1 else statement2
where statement1 is executed in case condition is true, and in case it is

not, statement2 is executed.
For example:
1 if (x == 100)
2 cout << "x is 100";
3 else
4 cout << "x is not 100";
This prints x is 100, if indeed x has a value of 100, but if it does not, and only if
it does not, it prints x is not 100instead.
Several if + else structures can be concatenated with the intention of checking a
range of values. For example:
1 if (x > 0)
2 cout << "x
3 else if (x <
4 cout << "x
5 else
6 cout << "x
is positive";
0)
is negative";
is 0";
This prints whether x is positive, negative, or zero by concatenating two if-else

structures. Again, it would have also been possible to execute more than a single
statement per case by grouping them into blocks enclosed in braces: {}.
Iteration statements (loops)

Loops repeat a statement a certain number of times, or while a condition is
fulfilled. They are introduced by the keywords while, do, and for.
The while loop
The simplest kind of loop is the while-loop. Its syntax is:

while (expression) statement
The while-loop simply repeats statement while expression is true. If, after any
execution of statement, expression is no longer true, the loop ends, and the
program continues right after the loop. For example, let's have a look at a
countdown using a while-loop:
1 // custom countdown using
2 while
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 int n = 10;
9
10 while (n>0) {
11
cout << n << ", ";
12
--n;
13 }
14
15 cout << "liftoff!\n";
}
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
liftoff!
Edit &
Run
The first statement in main sets n to a value of 10. This is the first number in the
countdown. Then the while-loop begins: if this value fulfills the
condition n>0 (that n is greater than zero), then the block that follows the
condition is executed, and repeated for as long as the condition ( n>0) remains
being true.
The whole process of the previous program can be interpreted according to the
following script (beginning in main):
1. n is assigned a value
2. The while condition is checked (n>0). At this point there are two
possibilities:
o
condition is true: the statement is executed (to step 3)
condition is false: ignore statement and continue after it (to step 5)
3. Execute statement:
cout << n << ", ";
--n;
(prints the value of n and decreases n by 1)

4. End of block. Return automatically to step 2.
5. Continue the program right after the block:
print liftoff! and end the program.
A thing to consider with while-loops is that the loop should end at some point,
and thus the statement shall alter values checked in the condition in some way,
so as to force it to become false at some point. Otherwise, the loop will continue
looping forever. In this case, the loop includes --n, that decreases the value of
the variable that is being evaluated in the condition ( n) by one - this will
eventually make the condition (n>0) false after a certain number of loop
iterations. To be more specific, after 10 iterations, n becomes 0, making the
condition no longer true, and ending the while-loop.
Note that the complexity of this loop is trivial for a computer, and so the whole
countdown is performed instantly, without any practical delay between elements
of the count (if interested, see sleep_for for a countdown example with delays).
The do-while loop
A very similar loop is the do-while loop, whose syntax is:

do statement while (condition);
It behaves like a while-loop, except that condition is evaluated after the

execution of statement instead of before, guaranteeing at least one execution
of statement, even if condition is never fulfilled. For example, the following
example program echoes any text the user introduces until the user enters
goodbye:
1 // echo machine
3 #include <string>
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 string str;
9 do {
10
cout << "Enter text: ";
11
getline (cin,str);
12
cout << "You entered: " << str <<
13 '\n';
Enter text: hello

You entered: hello
Enter text: who's
there?
You entered: who's
there?
Enter text: goodbye
You entered: goodbye
Edit &
Run
14
} while (str != "goodbye");
The do-while loop is usually preferred over a while-loop when

the statement needs to be executed at least once, such as when the condition
that is checked to end of the loop is determined within the loop statement itself.
In the previous example, the user input within the block is what will determine if
the loop ends. And thus, even if the user wants to end the loop as soon as
possible by entering goodbye, the block in the loop needs to be executed at least
once to prompt for input, and the condition can, in fact, only be determined after
it is executed.
The for loop
The for loop is designed to iterate a number of times. Its syntax is:
for (initialization; condition; increase) statement;
Like the while-loop, this loop repeats statement while condition is true. But, in
addition, the for loop provides specific locations to contain
an initialization and an increase expression, executed before the loop begins
the first time, and after each iteration, respectively. Therefore, it is especially
useful to use counter variables as condition.
It works in the following way:
1. initialization is executed. Generally, this declares a counter variable,
and sets it to some initial value. This is executed a single time, at the
beginning of the loop.
2. condition is checked. If it is true, the loop continues; otherwise, the loop
ends, and statement is skipped, going directly to step 5.
3. statement is executed. As usual, it can be either a single statement or a
block enclosed in curly braces { }.
4. increase is executed, and the loop gets back to step 2.
5. the loop ends: execution continues by the next statement after it.
Here is the countdown example using a for loop:

1 // countdown using a for
2 loop
5
6 int main ()
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1,
liftoff!
Edit &
Run
7{
8 for (int n=10; n>0; n--)
9{
10
cout << n << ", ";
11 }
cout << "liftoff!\n";
}
The three fields in a for-loop are optional. They can be left empty, but in all cases
the semicolon signs between them are required. For example, for (;n<10;) is a
loop without initialization or increase (equivalent to a while-loop); and for
(;n<10;++n) is a loop with increase, but no initialization (maybe because the
variable was already initialized before the loop). A loop with no condition is
equivalent to a loop with true as condition (i.e., an infinite loop).
Because each of the fields is executed in a particular time in the life cycle of a
loop, it may be useful to execute more than a single expression as any
of initialization, condition, or statement. Unfortunately, these are not statements,
but rather, simple expressions, and thus cannot be replaced by a block. As
expressions, they can, however, make use of the comma operator ( ,): This
operator is an expression separator, and can separate multiple expressions
where only one is generally expected. For example, using it, it would be possible
for a for loop to handle two counter variables, initializing and increasing both:
1 for ( n=0, i=100 ; n!=i ; ++n, --i )
2{
3
// whatever here...
4}
This loop will execute 50 times if neither n or i are modified within the loop:
n starts with a value of 0, and i with 100, the condition is n!=i (i.e., that n is not
equal to i). Because n is increased by one, and i decreased by one on each

iteration, the loop's condition will become false after the 50th iteration, when
both nand i are equal to 50.
Range-based for loop
The for-loop has another syntax, which is used exclusively with ranges:
for ( declaration : range ) statement;
This kind of for loop iterates over all the elements in range,
where declaration declares some variable able to take the value of an element
in this range. Ranges are sequences of elements, including arrays, containers,
and any other type supporting the functions begin and end; Most of these types
have not yet been introduced in this tutorial, but we are already acquainted with
at least one kind of range: strings, which are sequences of characters.
An example of range-based for loop using strings:
1 // range-based for loop
3 #include <string>
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 string str {"Hello!"};
9 for (char c : str)
10 {
11
std::cout << "[" << c << "]";
12 }
13 std::cout << '\n';
14 }
[H][e][l][l][o][!]
Note how what precedes the colon (:) in the for loop is the declaration of
a char variable (the elements in a string are of type char). We then use this
variable, c, in the statement block to represent the value of each of the elements
in the range.
This loop is automatic and does not require the explicit declaration of any
counter variable.
Range based loops usually make also use of type deduction for the type of the
elements with auto. Typically, the range-based loop above can also be written as:
1 for (auto c : str)
2 std::cout << "[" << c << "]";
Here, the type of c is automatically deduced as the type of the elements in str.
Jump statements
Jump statements allow altering the flow of a program by performing jumps to
specific locations.
The break statement

break leaves a loop, even if the condition for its end is not fulfilled. It can be used
to end an infinite loop, or to force it to end before its natural end. For example,
let's stop the countdown before its natural end:
1 // break loop example
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 for (int n=10; n>0; n--)
8 {
9
cout << n << ", ";
10
if (n==3)
11
{
12
cout << "countdown aborted!";
13
break;
14
}
15 }
16 }
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, countdown abo
The continue statement
The continue statement causes the program to skip the rest of the loop in the
current iteration, as if the end of the statement block had been reached, causing
it to jump to the start of the following iteration. For example, let's skip number 5
in our countdown:
1 // continue loop example
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 for (int n=10; n>0; n--) {
8
if (n==5) continue;
9
cout << n << ", ";
10 }
12 }
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff!
The goto statement

goto allows to make an absolute jump to another point in the program. This
unconditional jump ignores nesting levels, and does not cause any automatic
stack unwinding. Therefore, it is a feature to use with care, and preferably within
the same block of statements, especially in the presence of local variables.
The destination point is identified by a label, which is then used as an argument
for the goto statement. A label is made of a valid identifier followed by a colon
(:).
goto is generally deemed a low-level feature, with no particular use cases in
modern higher-level programming paradigms generally used with C++. But, just
as an example, here is a version of our countdown loop using goto:
1 // goto loop example
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int n=10;
8 mylabel:
9 cout << n << ", ";
10 n--;
11 if (n>0) goto mylabel;
13 }
10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, liftoff
Another selection statement: switch.

The syntax of the switch statement is a bit peculiar. Its purpose is to check for a
value among a number of possible constant expressions. It is something similar
to concatenating if-else statements, but limited to constant expressions. Its
most typical syntax is:
switch (expression)
{
case constant1:
group-of-statements-1;
break;
case constant2:
group-of-statements-2;
break;
.
.
.
default:
default-group-of-statements
}
It works in the following way: switch evaluates expression and checks if it is

equivalent to constant1; if it is, it executesgroup-of-statements-1 until it finds
the break statement. When it finds this break statement, the program jumps to
the end of the entire switch statement (the closing brace).
If expression was not equal to constant1, it is then checked against constant2. If
it is equal to this, it executes group-of-statements-2 until a break is found, when
it jumps to the end of the switch.
Finally, if the value of expression did not match any of the previously specified
constants (there may be any number of these), the program executes the
statements included after the default: label, if it exists (since it is optional).
Both of the following code fragments have the same behavior, demonstrating the
if-else equivalent of a switch statement:
switch example
switch (x) {
case 1:
cout << "x is 1";
break;
case 2:
cout << "x is 2";
break;
default:
cout << "value of x unknown";
}
if-else equivalent
if (x == 1) {
cout << "x is 1";
}
else if (x == 2) {
cout << "x is 2";
}
else {
cout << "value of x unknown";
}
The switch statement has a somewhat peculiar syntax inherited from the early
times of the first C compilers, because it uses labels instead of blocks. In the
most typical use (shown above), this means that break statements are needed
after each group of statements for a particular label. If break is not included, all
statements following the case (including those under any other labels) are also
executed, until the end of the switch block or a jump statement (such as break) is
reached.
If the example above lacked the break statement after the first group for case
one, the program would not jump automatically to the end of the switch block
after printing x is 1, and would instead continue executing the statements in
case two (thus printing also x is 2). It would then continue doing so until
a break statement is encountered, or the end of the switch block. This makes
unnecessary to enclose the statements for each case in braces {}, and can also
be useful to execute the same group of statements for different possible values.
For example:
1 switch (x) {
2 case 1:
3 case 2:
4 case 3:
5
cout << "x is 1, 2 or 3";
6
break;
7 default:
8
cout << "x is not 1, 2 nor 3";
9 }
Notice that switch is limited to compare its evaluated expression against labels
that are constant expressions. It is not possible to use variables as labels or
ranges, because they are not valid C++ constant expressions.
To check for ranges or values that are not constant, it is better to use
concatenations of if and else if statements.
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 }
Where:
- type is the type of the value returned by the function.
- name is the identifier by which the function can be called.
- parameters (as many as needed): Each parameter consists of a type followed by an
identifier, with each parameter being separated from the next by a comma. Each parameter
looks very much like a regular variable declaration (for example:int x), and in fact acts
within the function as a regular variable which is local to the function. The purpose of
parameters is to allow passing arguments to the function from the location where it is called
from.
- statements is the function's body. It is a block of statements surrounded by braces { } that
specify what the function actually does.
Let's have a look at an example:
1 // function example
4
5 int addition (int a, int b)
6{
7 int r;
8 r=a+b;
9 return r;
10 }
11
12 int main ()
13 {
14 int z;
15 z = addition (5,3);
16 cout << "The result is " << z;
17 }
The result is 8
This program is divided in two functions: addition and main. Remember that no matter the
order in which they are defined, a C++ program always starts by calling main. In fact, main is
the only function called automatically, and the code in any other function is only executed if
its function is called from main (directly or indirectly).
In the example above, main begins by declaring the variable z of type int, and right after
that, it performs the first function call: it calls addition. The call to a function follows a
structure very similar to its declaration. In the example above, the call to addition can be
compared to its definition just a few lines earlier:
The parameters in the function declaration have a clear correspondence to the arguments
passed in the function call. The call passes two values, 5 and 3, to the function; these
correspond to the parameters a and b, declared for functionaddition.
At the point at which the function is called from within main, the control is passed to
function addition: here, execution of main is stopped, and will only resume once
the addition function ends. At the moment of the function call, the value of both arguments
(5 and 3) are copied to the local variables int a and int b within the function.
Then, inside addition, another local variable is declared (int r), and by means of the
expression r=a+b, the result of aplus b is assigned to r; which, for this case, where a is 5
and b is 3, means that 8 is assigned to r.
The final statement within the function:
return r;
Ends function addition, and returns the control back to the point where the function was
called; in this case: to functionmain. At this precise moment, the program resumes its course
on main returning exactly at the same point at which it was interrupted by the call
to addition. But additionally, because addition has a return type, the call is evaluated as
having a value, and this value is the value specified in the return statement that
ended addition: in this particular case, the value of the local variable r, which at the
moment of the return statement had a value of 8.
Therefore, the call to addition is an expression with the value returned by the function, and
in this case, that value, 8, is assigned to z. It is as if the entire function call (addition(5,3))
was replaced by the value it returns (i.e., 8).
Then main simply prints this value by calling:
cout << "The result is " << z;
A function can actually be called multiple times within a program, and its argument is
naturally not limited just to literals:
1 // function example
4
5 int subtraction (int a, int b)
6{
7 int r;
8 r=a-b;
9 return r;
10 }
11
12 int main ()
13 {
14 int x=5, y=3, z;
15 z = subtraction (7,2);
16 cout << "The first result is " << z << '\n';
17 cout << "The second result is " << subtraction (7,2) <<
18 '\n';
19 cout << "The third result is " << subtraction (x,y) <<
20 '\n';
21 z= 4 + subtraction (x,y);
cout << "The fourth result is " << z << '\n';
}
The
The
The
The
first result is 5
second result is 5
third result is 2
fourth result is 6
Similar to the addition function in the previous example, this example defines
a subtract function, that simply returns the difference between its two parameters. This
time, main calls this function several times, demonstrating more possible ways in which a
function can be called.
Let's examine each of these calls, bearing in mind that each function call is itself an
expression that is evaluated as the value it returns. Again, you can think of it as if the function
call was itself replaced by the returned value:
1 z = subtraction (7,2);
2 cout << "The first result is " << z;
If we replace the function call by the value it returns (i.e., 5), we would have:
1 z = 5;
2 cout << "The first result is " << z;
With the same procedure, we could interpret:

cout << "The second result is " << subtraction (7,2);
as:
cout << "The second result is " << 5;
since 5 is the value returned by subtraction (7,2).
In the case of:

cout << "The third result is " << subtraction (x,y);
The arguments passed to subtraction are variables instead of literals. That is also valid, and
works fine. The function is called with the values x and y have at the moment of the call: 5
and 3 respectively, returning 2 as result.
The fourth call is again similar:
z = 4 + subtraction (x,y);
The only addition being that now the function call is also an operand of an addition operation.
Again, the result is the same as if the function call was replaced by its result: 6. Note, that
thanks to the commutative property of additions, the above can also be written as:
z = subtraction (x,y) + 4;
With exactly the same result. Note also that the semicolon does not necessarily go after the
function call, but, as always, at the end of the whole statement. Again, the logic behind may
be easily seen again by replacing the function calls by their returned value:
1 z = 4 + 2;
2 z = 2 + 4;
// same as z = 4 + subtraction (x,y);

// same as z = subtraction (x,y) + 4;
Functions with no type. The use of void

The syntax shown above for functions:
type name ( argument1, argument2 ...) { statements }
Requires the declaration to begin with a type. This is the type of the value returned by the
function. But what if the function does not need to return a value? In this case, the type to be
used is void, which is a special type to represent the absence of value. For example, a
function that simply prints a message may not need to return any value:
1 // void function example
4
5 void printmessage ()
6{
7 cout << "I'm a function!";
8}
9
10 int main ()
I'm a function!
11 {
12 printmessage ();
13 }
can also be used in the function's parameter list to explicitly specify that the function
takes no actual parameters when called. For example, printmessage could have been
declared as:
void
1 void printmessage (void)

2{
3 cout << "I'm a function!";
4}
In C++, an empty parameter list can be used instead of void with same meaning, but the use
of void in the argument list was popularized by the C language, where this is a requirement.
Something that in no case is optional are the parentheses that follow the function name,
neither in its declaration nor when calling it. And even when the function takes no
parameters, at least an empty pair of parentheses shall always be appended to the function
name. See how printmessage was called in an earlier example:
printmessage ();
The parentheses are what differentiate functions from other kinds of declarations or
statements. The following would not call the function:
printmessage;
The return value of main

You may have noticed that the return type of main is int, but most examples in this and
earlier chapters did not actually return any value from main.
Well, there is a catch: If the execution of main ends normally without encountering
a return statement the compiler assumes the function ends with an implicit return statement:
return 0;
Note that this only applies to function main for historical reasons. All other functions with a
return type shall end with a proper return statement that includes a return value, even if this
is never used.
When main returns zero (either implicitly or explicitly), it is interpreted by the environment
as that the program ended successfully. Other values may be returned by main, and some
environments give access to that value to the caller in some way, although this behavior is not
required nor necessarily portable between platforms. The values for main that are guaranteed
to be interpreted in the same way on all platforms are:
value
0
EXIT_SUCCESS
EXIT_FAILURE
description
The program was successful
The program was successful (same as above).
This value is defined in header <cstdlib>.
The program failed.
This value is defined in header <cstdlib>.
Because the implicit return 0; statement for main is a tricky exception, some authors
consider it good practice to explicitly write the statement.
Arguments passed by value and by reference

In the functions seen earlier, arguments have always been passed by value. This means that,
when calling a function, what is passed to the function are the values of these arguments on
the moment of the call, which are copied into the variables represented by the function
parameters. For example, take:
1 int x=5, y=3, z;
2 z = addition ( x, y );
In this case, function addition is passed 5 and 3, which are copies of the values of x and y,
respectively. These values (5 and 3) are used to initialize the variables set as parameters in the
function's definition, but any modification of these variables within the function has no effect
on the values of the variables x and y outside it, because x and y were themselves not passed
to the function on the call, but only copies of their values at that moment.
In certain cases, though, it may be useful to access an external variable from within a
function. To do that, arguments can be passed by reference, instead of by value. For example,
the function duplicate in this code duplicates the value of its three arguments, causing the
variables used as arguments to actually be modified by the call:
1 // passing parameters by reference
4
5 void duplicate (int& a, int& b, int& c)
6{
7 a*=2;
8 b*=2;
9 c*=2;
10 }
11
x=2, y=6, z=14
12 int main ()
13 {
14 int x=1, y=3, z=7;
15 duplicate (x, y, z);
16 cout << "x=" << x << ", y=" << y << ", z=" <<
17 z;
18 return 0;
}
To gain access to its arguments, the function declares its parameters as references. In C++,
references are indicated with an ampersand (&) following the parameter type, as in the
parameters taken by duplicate in the example above.
When a variable is passed by reference, what is passed is no longer a copy, but the variable
itself, the variable identified by the function parameter, becomes somehow associated with
the argument passed to the function, and any modification on their corresponding local
variables within the function are reflected in the variables passed as arguments in the call.
In fact, a, b, and c become aliases of the arguments passed on the function call (x, y, and z)
and any change on a within the function is actually modifying variable x outside the function.
Any change on b modifies y, and any change on cmodifies z. That is why when, in the
example, function duplicate modifies the values of variables a, b, and c, the values of x, y,
and z are affected.
If instead of defining duplicate as:
void duplicate (int& a, int& b, int& c)
Was it to be defined without the ampersand signs as:

void duplicate (int a, int b, int c)
The variables would not be passed by reference, but by value, creating instead copies of their
values. In this case, the output of the program would have been the values of x, y,
and z without being modified (i.e., 1, 3, and 7).
Efficiency considerations and const references

Calling a function with parameters taken by value causes copies of the values to be made.
This is a relatively inexpensive operation for fundamental types such as int, but if the
parameter is of a large compound type, it may result on certain overhead. For example,
consider the following function:
1 string concatenate (string a, string b)

2{
3 return a+b;
4}
This function takes two strings as parameters (by value), and returns the result of
concatenating them. By passing the arguments by value, the function forces a and b to be
copies of the arguments passed to the function when it is called. And if these are long strings,
it may mean copying large quantities of data just for the function call.
But this copy can be avoided altogether if both parameters are made references:
1 string concatenate (string& a, string& b)
2{
3 return a+b;
4}
Arguments by reference do not require a copy. The function operates directly on (aliases of)
the strings passed as arguments, and, at most, it might mean the transfer of certain pointers to
the function. In this regard, the version ofconcatenate taking references is more efficient
than the version taking values, since it does not need to copy expensive-to-copy strings.
On the flip side, functions with reference parameters are generally perceived as functions that
modify the arguments passed, because that is why reference parameters are actually for.
The solution is for the function to guarantee that its reference parameters are not going to be
modified by this function. This can be done by qualifying the parameters as constant:
1 string concatenate (const string& a, const string& b)
2{
3 return a+b;
4}
By qualifying them as const, the function is forbidden to modify the values of

neither a nor b, but can actually access their values as references (aliases of the arguments),
without having to make actual copies of the strings.
Therefore, const references provide functionality similar to passing arguments by value, but
with an increased efficiency for parameters of large types. That is why they are extremely
popular in C++ for arguments of compound types. Note though, that for most fundamental
types, there is no noticeable difference in efficiency, and in some cases, const references may
even be less efficient!
Inline functions
Calling a function generally causes a certain overhead (stacking arguments, jumps, etc...), and
thus for very short functions, it may be more efficient to simply insert the code of the
function where it is called, instead of performing the process of formally calling a function.
Preceding a function declaration with the inline specifier informs the compiler that inline
expansion is preferred over the usual function call mechanism for a specific function. This
does not change at all the behavior of a function, but is merely used to suggest the compiler
that the code generated by the function body shall be inserted at each point the function is
called, instead of being invoked with a regular function call.
For example, the concatenate function above may be declared inline as:
1 inline string concatenate (const string& a, const string& b)
2{
3 return a+b;
4}
This informs the compiler that when concatenate is called, the program prefers the function
to be expanded inline, instead of performing a regular call. inline is only specified in the
function declaration, not when it is called.
Note that most compilers already optimize code to generate inline functions when they see an
opportunity to improve efficiency, even if not explicitly marked with the inline specifier.
Therefore, this specifier merely indicates the compiler that inline is preferred for this
function, although the compiler is free to not inline it, and optimize otherwise. In C++,
optimization is a task delegated to the compiler, which is free to generate any code for as long
as the resulting behavior is the one specified by the code.
Default values in parameters

In C++, functions can also have optional parameters, for which no arguments are required in
the call, in such a way that, for example, a function with three parameters may be called with
only two. For this, the function shall include a default value for its last parameter, which is
used by the function when called with fewer arguments. For example:
1 // default values in functions
4
5 int divide (int a, int b=2)
6{
7 int r;
8 r=a/b;
9 return (r);
10 }
11
12 int main ()
13 {
14 cout << divide (12) << '\n';
15 cout << divide (20,4) << '\n';
16 return 0;
17 }
6
5
In this example, there are two calls to function divide. In the first one:
divide (12)
The call only passes one argument to the function, even though the function has two
parameters. In this case, the function assumes the second parameter to be 2 (notice the
function definition, which declares its second parameter asint b=2). Therefore, the result is
6.
In the second call:
divide (20,4)
The call passes two arguments to the function. Therefore, the default value for b (int b=2) is
ignored, and b takes the value passed as argument, that is 4, yielding a result of 5.
Declaring functions
In C++, identifiers can only be used in expressions once they have been declared. For
example, some variable x cannot be used before being declared with a statement, such as:
int x;
The same applies to functions. Functions cannot be called before they are declared. That is
why, in all the previous examples of functions, the functions were always defined before
the main function, which is the function from where the other functions were called.
If main were defined before the other functions, this would break the rule that functions shall
be declared before being used, and thus would not compile.
The prototype of a function can be declared without actually defining the function
completely, giving just enough details to allow the types involved in a function call to be
known. Naturally, the function shall be defined somewhere else, like later in the code. But at
least, once declared like this, it can already be called.
The declaration shall include all types involved (the return type and the type of its
arguments), using the same syntax as used in the definition of the function, but replacing the
body of the function (the block of statements) with an ending semicolon.
The parameter list does not need to include the parameter names, but only their types.
Parameter names can nevertheless be specified, but they are optional, and do not need to
necessarily match those in the function definition. For example, a function
called protofunction with two int parameters can be declared with either of these
statements:
1 int protofunction (int first, int second);

2 int protofunction (int, int);
Anyway, including a name for each parameter always improves legibility of the declaration.
1 // declaring functions prototypes
4
5 void odd (int x);
6 void even (int x);
7
8 int main()
9{
10 int i;
11 do {
12
cout << "Please, enter number (0 to exit):
13 ";
14
cin >> i;
15
odd (i);
16 } while (i!=0);
17 return 0;
18 }
19
20 void odd (int x)
21 {
22 if ((x%2)!=0) cout << "It is odd.\n";
23 else even (x);
24 }
25
26 void even (int x)
27 {
28 if ((x%2)==0) cout << "It is even.\n";
29 else odd (x);
}
Please, enter
It is odd.
Please, enter
It is even.
Please, enter
It is even.
Please, enter
It is even.
number (0 to exit): 9

This example is indeed not an example of efficiency. You can probably write yourself a
version of this program with half the lines of code. Anyway, this example illustrates how
functions can be declared before its definition:
The following lines:
1 void odd (int a);
2 void even (int a);
Declare the prototype of the functions. They already contain all what is necessary to call
them, their name, the types of their argument, and their return type (void in this case). With
these prototype declarations in place, they can be called before they are entirely defined,
allowing for example, to place the function from where they are called (main) before the
actual definition of these functions.
But declaring functions before being defined is not only useful to reorganize the order of
functions within the code. In some cases, such as in this particular case, at least one of the
declarations is required, because odd and even are mutually called; there is a call
to even in odd and a call to odd in even. And, therefore, there is no way to structure the code
so thatodd is defined before even, and even before odd.
Recursivity
Recursivity is the property that functions have to be called by themselves. It is useful for
some tasks, such as sorting elements, or calculating the factorial of numbers. For example, in
order to obtain the factorial of a number (n!) the mathematical formula would be:
n! = n * (n-1) * (n-2) * (n-3) ... * 1
More concretely, 5! (factorial of 5) would be:
5! = 5 * 4 * 3 * 2 * 1 = 120
And a recursive function to calculate this in C++ could be:

1 // factorial calculator
4
5 long factorial (long a)
6{
7 if (a > 1)
8
return (a * factorial (a-1));
9 else
10
return 1;
11 }
12
13 int main ()
14 {
15 long number = 9;
16 cout << number << "! = " << factorial
17 (number);
18 return 0;
}
9! = 362880
Notice how in function factorial we included a call to itself, but only if the argument passed
was greater than 1, since, otherwise, the function would perform an infinite recursive loop, in
which once it arrived to 0, it would continue multiplying by all the negative numbers
(probably provoking a stack overflow at some point during runtime).
Overloads and templates

Overloaded functions
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 // overloading functions
4
5 int operate (int a, int b)
6{
7 return (a*b);
8}
9
10 double operate (double a, double b)
11 {
12 return (a/b);
13 }
14
15 int main ()
16 {
17 int x=5,y=2;
18 double n=5.0,m=2.0;
19 cout << operate (x,y) << '\n';
20 cout << operate (n,m) << '\n';
21 return 0;
22 }
10
2.5
In this example, there are two functions called operate, but one of them has two parameters
of type int, while the other has them of type double. The compiler knows which one to call
in each case by examining the types passed as arguments when the function is called. If it is
called with two int arguments, it calls to the function that has two int parameters, and if it is
called with two doubles, it calls the one with two doubles.
In this example, both functions have quite different behaviors, the int version multiplies its
arguments, while the doubleversion divides them. This is generally not a good idea. Two
functions with the same name are generally expected to have -at least- a similar behavior, but
this example demonstrates that is entirely possible for them not to. Two overloaded functions
(i.e., two functions with the same name) have entirely different definitions; they are, for all
purposes, different functions, that only happen to have the same name.
Note that a function cannot be overloaded only by its return type. At least one of its
parameters must have a different type.
Function templates
Overloaded functions may have the same definition. For example:
1 // overloaded functions
4
5 int sum (int a, int b)
6{
7 return a+b;
8}
9
10 double sum (double a, double b)
30
2.5
11 {
12 return a+b;
13 }
14
15 int main ()
16 {
17 cout << sum (10,20) << '\n';
18 cout << sum (1.0,1.5) << '\n';
19 return 0;
20 }
Here, sum is overloaded with different parameter types, but with the exact same body.
The function sum could be overloaded for a lot of types, and it could make sense for all of
them to have the same body. For cases such as this, C++ has the ability to define functions
with generic types, known as function templates. Defining a function template follows the
same syntax than a regular function, except that it is preceded by the template keyword and
a series of template parameters enclosed in angle-brackets <>:
template <template-parameters> function-declaration
The template parameters are a series of parameters separated by commas. These parameters
can be generic template types by specifying either the class or typename keyword followed
by an identifier. This identifier can then be used in the function declaration as if it was a
regular type. For example, a generic sum function could be defined as:
1 template <class SomeType>
2 SomeType sum (SomeType a, SomeType b)
3{
4 return a+b;
5}
It makes no difference whether the generic type is specified with keyword class or
keyword typename in the template argument list (they are 100% synonyms in template
declarations).
In the code above, declaring SomeType (a generic type within the template parameters
enclosed in angle-brackets) allowsSomeType to be used anywhere in the function definition,
just as any other type; it can be used as the type for parameters, as return type, or to declare
new variables of this type. In all cases, it represents a generic type that will be determined on
the moment the template is instantiated.
Instantiating a template is applying the template to create a function using particular types or
values for its template parameters. This is done by calling the function template, with the
same syntax as calling a regular function, but specifying the template arguments enclosed in
angle brackets:
name <template-arguments> (function-arguments)
For example, the sum function template defined above can
x = sum<int>(10,20);
be called with:
The function sum<int> is just one of the possible instantiations of function template sum. In
this case, by using int as template argument in the call, the compiler automatically
instantiates a version of sum where each occurrence ofSomeType is replaced by int, as if it
was defined as:
1 int sum (int a, int b)
2{
3 return a+b;
4}
Let's see an actual example:

1 // function template
4
5 template <class T>
6 T sum (T a, T b)
7{
8 T result;
9 result = a + b;
10 return result;
11 }
12
13 int main () {
14 int i=5, j=6, k;
15 double f=2.0, g=0.5, h;
16 k=sum<int>(i,j);
17 h=sum<double>(f,g);
18 cout << k << '\n';
19 cout << h << '\n';
20 return 0;
21 }
11
2.5
In this case, we have used T as the template parameter name, instead of SomeType. It makes
no difference, and T is actually a quite common template parameter name for generic types.
In the example above, we used the function template sum twice. The first time with arguments
of type int, and the second one with arguments of type double. The compiler has
instantiated and then called each time the appropriate version of the function.
Note also how T is also used to declare a local variable of that (generic) type within sum:
T result;
Therefore, result will be a variable of the same type as the parameters a and b, and as the type
returned by the function.
In this specific case where the generic type T is used as a parameter for sum, the compiler is
even able to deduce the data type automatically without having to explicitly specify it within
angle brackets. Therefore, instead of explicitly specifying the template arguments with:
1 k = sum<int> (i,j);
2 h = sum<double> (f,g);
It is possible to instead simply write:

1 k = sum (i,j);
2 h = sum (f,g);
without the type enclosed in angle brackets. Naturally, for that, the type shall be
unambiguous. If sum is called with arguments of different types, the compiler may not be able
to deduce the type of T automatically.
Templates are a powerful and versatile feature. They can have multiple template parameters,
and the function can still use regular non-templated types. For example:
1 // function templates
4
5 template <class T, class U>
6 bool are_equal (T a, U b)
7{
8 return (a==b);
9}
10
11 int main ()
12 {
13 if (are_equal(10,10.0))
14
cout << "x and y are equal\n";
15 else
16
cout << "x and y are not equal\n";
17 return 0;
18 }
x and y are equal
Note that this example uses automatic template parameter deduction in the call to are_equal:
are_equal(10,10.0)
Is equivalent to:
are_equal<int,double>(10,10.0)
Since, in C++, integer literals with no suffix (such as 10) are always of type int, and
floating-point literals without suffix (such as 10.0) are always of type double, there is no
ambiguity possible, and thus the template arguments can be omitted in the call.
Non-type template arguments

The template parameters can not only include types introduced by class or typename, but
can also include expressions of a particular type:
1 // template arguments
4
5 template <class T, int N>
6 T fixed_multiply (T val)
7{
8 return val * N;
9}
10
11 int main() {
12 std::cout << fixed_multiply<int,2>(10) <<
13 '\n';
14 std::cout << fixed_multiply<int,3>(10) <<
'\n';
}
20
30
The second argument of the fixed_multiply function template is of type int. It just looks
like a regular function parameter, and can actually be used just like one.
But there exists a major difference: the value of template parameters is determined on
compile-time to generate a different instantiation of the function fixed_multiply, and thus
the value of that argument is never passed during runtime: The two calls
to fixed_multiply in main essentially call two versions of the function: one that always
multiplies by two, and one that always multiplies by three. For that same reason, the second
template argument needs to be a constant expression (it cannot be passed a variable).
Name visibility
Scopes
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 block, such as a function or a
selective statement, has block scope, and is only visible within the specific block in which it
is declared, but not outside it.
Variables with block scope are known as local variables.
For example, a variable declared in the body of a function is a local variable that extends
until the end of the the function (i.e., until the brace } that closes the function definition), but
not outside it:
1 int foo;
// global variable
2
3 int some_function ()
4{
5 int bar;
// local variable
6 bar = 0;
7}
8
9 int other_function ()
10 {
11 foo = 1; // ok: foo is a global variable
12 bar = 2; // wrong: bar is not visible from this function
13 }
In each scope, a name can only represent one entity. For example, there cannot be two
variables with the same name in the same scope:
1 int some_function ()
2{
3 int x;
4 x = 0;
5 double x;
// wrong: name already used in this scope
6 x = 0.0;
7}
The visibility of an entity with block scope extends until the end of the block, including inner
blocks. Nevertheless, an inner block, because it is a different block, can re-utilize a name
existing in an outer scope to refer to a different entity; in this case, the name will refer to a
different entity only within the inner block, hiding the entity it names outside. While outside
it, it will still refer to the original entity. For example:
1 // inner block scopes
4
5 int main () {
6 int x = 10;
7 int y = 20;
8 {
9
int x;
// ok, inner scope.
10
x = 50; // sets value to inner x
11
y = 50; // sets value to (outer) y
12
cout << "inner block:\n";
13
cout << "x: " << x << '\n';
14
cout << "y: " << y << '\n';
15 }
16 cout << "outer block:\n";
17 cout << "x: " << x << '\n';
18 cout << "y: " << y << '\n';
19 return 0;
20 }
inner block:
x: 50
y: 50
outer block:
x: 10
y: 50
Note that y is not hidden in the inner block, and thus accessing y still accesses the outer
variable.
Variables declared in declarations that introduce a block, such as function parameters and
variables declared in loops and conditions (such as those declared on a for or an if) are local
to the block they introduce.
Namespaces
Only one entity can exist with a particular name in a particular scope. This is seldom a
problem for local names, since blocks tend to be relatively short, and names have particular
purposes within them, such as naming a counter variable, an argument, etc...
But non-local names bring more possibilities for name collision, especially considering that
libraries may declare many functions, types, and variables, neither of them local in nature,
and some of them very generic.
Namespaces allow us to group named entities that otherwise would have global scope into
narrower scopes, giving themnamespace scope. This allows organizing the elements of
programs into different logical scopes referred to by names.
The syntax to declare a namespaces is:
namespace identifier
{
named_entities
}
Where identifier is any valid identifier and named_entities is the set of variables, types
and functions that are included within the namespace. For example:
1 namespace myNamespace
2{
3 int a, b;
4}
In this case, the variables a and b are normal variables declared within a namespace
called myNamespace.
These variables can be accessed from within their namespace normally, with their identifier
(either a or b), but if accessed from outside the myNamespace namespace they have to be
properly qualified with the scope operator ::. For example, to access the previous variables
from outside myNamespace they should be qualified like:
1 myNamespace::a
2 myNamespace::b
Namespaces are particularly useful to avoid name collisions. For example:

1 // namespaces
4
5 namespace foo
6{
7 int value() { return 5; }
8}
9
10 namespace bar
11 {
13 double value() { return 2*pi; }
14 }
15
16 int main () {
17 cout << foo::value() << '\n';
18 cout << bar::value() << '\n';
19 cout << bar::pi << '\n';
20 return 0;
21 }
5
6.2832
3.1416
In this case, there are two functions with the same name: value. One is defined within the
namespace foo, and the other one in bar. No redefinition errors happen thanks to
namespaces. Notice also how pi is accessed in an unqualified manner from within
namespace bar (just as pi), while it is again accessed in main, but here it needs to be
qualified asbar::pi.
Namespaces can be split: Two segments of a code can be declared in the same namespace:
1 namespace foo { int a; }
2 namespace bar { int b; }
3 namespace foo { int c; }
This declares three variables: a and c are in namespace foo, while b is in namespace bar.
Namespaces can even extend across different translation units (i.e., across different files of
source code).
using
The keyword using introduces a name into the current declarative region (such as a block),
thus avoiding the need to qualify the name. For example:
1 // using
4
5
2.7183
10
3.1416
5 namespace first
6{
7 int x = 5;
8 int y = 10;
9}
10
11 namespace second
12 {
13 double x = 3.1416;
14 double y = 2.7183;
15 }
16
17 int main () {
18 using first::x;
19 using second::y;
20 cout << x << '\n';
21 cout << y << '\n';
22 cout << first::y << '\n';
23 cout << second::x << '\n';
24 return 0;
25 }
Notice how in main, the variable x (without any name qualifier) refers to first::x,
whereas y refers to second::y, just as specified by the using declarations. The
variables first::y and second::x can still be accessed, but require fully qualified names.
The keyword using can also be used as a directive to introduce an entire namespace:
1 // using
4
5 namespace first
6{
7 int x = 5;
8 int y = 10;
9}
10
11 namespace second
12 {
13 double x = 3.1416;
14 double y = 2.7183;
15 }
16
17 int main () {
18 using namespace first;
19 cout << x << '\n';
20 cout << y << '\n';
21 cout << second::x << '\n';
22 cout << second::y << '\n';
23 return 0;
24 }
5
10
3.1416
2.7183
In this case, by declaring that we were using namespace first, all direct uses
of x and y without name qualifiers were also looked up in namespace first.
and using namespace have validity only in the same block in which they are stated or
in the entire source code file if they are used directly in the global scope. For example, it
would be possible to first use the objects of one namespace and then those of another one by
splitting the code in different blocks:
using
1 // using namespace example

4
5 namespace first
6{
7 int x = 5;
8}
9
10 namespace second
11 {
12 double x = 3.1416;
13 }
14
15 int main () {
16 {
17
using namespace first;
18
cout << x << '\n';
19 }
20 {
21
using namespace second;
22
cout << x << '\n';
23 }
24 return 0;
25 }
5
3.1416
Namespace aliasing
Existing namespaces can be aliased with new names, with the following syntax:
namespace new_name = current_name;
The std namespace

All the entities (variables, types, constants, and functions) of the standard C++ library are
declared within the stdnamespace. Most examples in these tutorials, in fact, include the
following line:
This introduces direct visibility of all the names of the std namespace into the code. This is
done in these tutorials to facilitate comprehension and shorten the length of the examples, but
many programmers prefer to qualify each of the elements of the standard library used in their
programs. For example, instead of:
cout << "Hello world!";
It is common to instead see:

std::cout << "Hello world!";
Whether the elements in the std namespace are introduced with using declarations or are
fully qualified on every use does not change the behavior or efficiency of the resulting
program in any way. It is mostly a matter of style preference, although for projects mixing
libraries, explicit qualification tends to be preferred.
Storage classes
The storage for variables with global or namespace scope is allocated for the entire duration
of the program. This is known as static storage, and it contrasts with the storage for local
variables (those declared within a block). These use what is known as automatic storage. The
storage for local variables is only available during the block in which they are declared; after
that, that same storage may be used for a local variable of some other function, or used
otherwise.
But there is another substantial difference between variables with static storage and variables
with automatic storage:
- Variables with static storage (such as global variables) that are not explicitly initialized are
automatically initialized to zeroes.
- Variables with automatic storage (such as local variables) that are not explicitly initialized
are left uninitialized, and thus have an undetermined value.
For example:
1 // static vs automatic storage
4
5 int x;
6
7 int main ()
8{
9 int y;
10 cout << x << '\n';
11 cout << y << '\n';
12 return 0;
13 }
0
4285838
The actual output may vary, but only the value of x is guaranteed to be zero. y can actually
contain just about any value (including zero).
Arrays
An array is a series of elements of the same type placed in contiguous memory locations that
can be individually referenced by adding an index to a unique identifier.
That means that, for example, five values of type int can be declared as an array without
having to declare 5 different variables (each with its own identifier). Instead, using an array,
the five int values are stored in contiguous memory locations, and all five can be accessed
using the same identifier, with the proper index.
For example, an array containing 5 integer values of type int called foo could be represented
as:
where each blank panel represents an element of the array. In this case, these are values of
type int. These elements are numbered from 0 to 4, being 0 the first and 4 the last; In C++,
the first element in an array is always numbered with a zero (not a one), no matter its length.
Like a regular variable, an array must be declared before it is used. A typical declaration for
an array in C++ is:
type name [elements];
where type is a valid type (such as int, float...), name is a valid identifier and
the elements field (which is always enclosed in square brackets []), specifies the length of
the array in terms of the number of elements.
Therefore, the foo array, with five elements of type int, can be declared as:
int foo [5];
NOTE: The elements field within square brackets [], representing the number of elements
in the array, must be aconstant expression, since arrays are blocks of static memory whose
size must be determined at compile time, before the program runs.
Initializing arrays
By default, regular arrays of local scope (for example, those declared within a function) are
left uninitialized. This means that none of its elements are set to any particular value; their
contents are undetermined at the point the array is declared.
But the elements in an array can be explicitly initialized to specific values when it is declared,
by enclosing those initial values in braces {}. For example:
int foo [5] = { 16, 2, 77, 40, 12071 };
This statement declares an array that can be represented like this:
The number of values between braces {} shall not be greater than the number of elements in
the array. For example, in the example above, foo was declared having 5 elements (as
specified by the number enclosed in square brackets, []), and the braces {} contained exactly
5 values, one for each element. If declared with less, the remaining elements are set to their
default values (which for fundamental types, means they are filled with zeroes). For example:
int bar [5] = { 10, 20, 30 };
Will create an array like this:
The initializer can even have no values, just the braces:

int baz [5] = { };
This creates an array of five int values, each initialized with a value of zero:
When an initialization of values is provided for an array, C++ allows the possibility of
leaving the square brackets empty[]. In this case, the compiler will assume automatically a
size for the array that matches the number of values included between the braces {}:
int foo [] = { 16, 2, 77, 40, 12071 };
After this declaration, array foo would be 5 int long, since we have provided 5 initialization
values.
Finally, the evolution of C++ has led to the adoption of universal initialization also for arrays.
Therefore, there is no longer need for the equal sign between the declaration and the
initializer. Both these statements are equivalent:
1 int foo[] = { 10, 20, 30 };
2 int foo[] { 10, 20, 30 };
Static arrays, and those declared directly in a namespace (outside any function), are always
initialized. If no explicit initializer is specified, all the elements are default-initialized (with
zeroes, for fundamental types).
Accessing the values of an array

The values of any of the elements in an array can be accessed just like the value of a regular
variable of the same type. The syntax is:
name[index]
Following the previous examples in which foo had 5 elements and each of those elements
was of type int, the name which can be used to refer to each element is the following:
For example, the following statement stores the value 75 in the third element of foo:
foo [2] = 75;
and, for example, the following copies the value of the third element of foo to a variable
called x:
x = foo[2];
Therefore, the expression foo[2] is itself a variable of type int.

Notice that the third element of foo is specified foo[2], since the first one is foo[0], the
second one is foo[1], and therefore, the third one is foo[2]. By this same reason, its last
element is foo[4]. Therefore, if we write foo[5], we would be accessing the sixth element
of foo, and therefore actually exceeding the size of the array.
In C++, it is syntactically correct to exceed the valid range of indices for an array. This can
create problems, since accessing out-of-range elements do not cause errors on compilation,
but can cause errors on runtime. The reason for this being allowed will be seen in a later
chapter when pointers are introduced.
At this point, it is important to be able to clearly distinguish between the two uses that
brackets [] have related to arrays. They perform two different tasks: one is to specify the size
of arrays when they are declared; and the second one is to specify indices for concrete array
elements when they are accessed. Do not confuse these two possible uses of brackets [] with
arrays.
1 int foo[5];
2 foo[2] = 75;
// declaration of a new array

// access to an element of the array.
The main difference is that the declaration is preceded by the type of the elements, while the
access is not.
Some other valid operations with arrays:
1 foo[0] = a;
2 foo[a] = 75;
3 b = foo [a+2];
4 foo[foo[a]] = foo[2] + 5;
For example:
1 // arrays example
4
5 int foo [] = {16, 2, 77, 40, 12071};
6 int n, result=0;
7
8 int main ()
9{
10 for ( n=0 ; n<5 ; ++n )
11 {
12
result += foo[n];
13 }
14 cout << result;
15 return 0;
16 }
12206
Multidimensional arrays
Multidimensional arrays can be described as "arrays of arrays". For example, a bidimensional
array can be imagined as a two-dimensional table made of elements, all of them of a same
uniform data type.
jimmy
represents a bidimensional array of 3 per 5 elements of type int. The C++ syntax for
this is:
int jimmy [3][5];
and, for example, the way to reference the second element vertically and fourth horizontally
in an expression would be:
jimmy[1][3]
(remember that array indices always begin with zero).

Multidimensional arrays are not limited to two indices (i.e., two dimensions). They can
contain as many indices as needed. Although be careful: the amount of memory needed for an
array increases exponentially with each dimension. For example:
char century [100][365][24][60][60];
declares an array with an element of type char for each second in a century. This amounts to
more than 3 billion char! So this declaration would consume more than 3 gigabytes of
memory!
At the end, multidimensional arrays are just an abstraction for programmers, since the same
results can be achieved with a simple array, by multiplying its indices:
1 int jimmy [3][5];
2 int jimmy [15];
// is equivalent to
// (3 * 5 = 15)
With the only difference that with multidimensional arrays, the compiler automatically
remembers the depth of each imaginary dimension. The following two pieces of code
produce the exact same result, but one uses a bidimensional array while the other uses a
simple array:
multidimensional array
#define WIDTH 5
#define HEIGHT 3
pseudo-multidimensional array
#define WIDTH 5
#define HEIGHT 3
int jimmy [HEIGHT][WIDTH];

int n,m;
int jimmy [HEIGHT * WIDTH];

int n,m;
int main ()
{
for (n=0; n<HEIGHT; n++)
for (m=0; m<WIDTH; m++)
{
jimmy[n][m]=(n+1)*(m+1);
}
}
int main ()
{
for (n=0; n<HEIGHT; n++)
for (m=0; m<WIDTH; m++)
{
jimmy[n*WIDTH+m]=(n+1)*(m+1);
}
}
None of the two code snippets above produce any output on the screen, but both assign
values to the memory block called jimmy in the following way:
Note that the code uses defined constants for the width and height, instead of using directly
their numerical values. This gives the code a better readability, and allows changes in the
code to be made easily in one place.
Arrays as parameters
At some point, we may need to pass an array to a function as a parameter. In C++, it is not
possible to pass the entire block of memory represented by an array to a function directly as
an argument. But what can be passed instead is its address. In practice, this has almost the
same effect, and it is a much faster and more efficient operation.
To accept an array as parameter for a function, the parameters can be declared as the array
type, but with empty brackets, omitting the actual size of the array. For example:
void procedure (int arg[])
This function accepts a parameter of type "array of int" called arg. In order to pass to this
function an array declared as:
int myarray [40];
it would be enough to write a call like this:

procedure (myarray);
Here you have a complete example:

1 // arrays as parameters
4
5 void printarray (int arg[], int length) {
6 for (int n=0; n<length; ++n)
7
cout << arg[n] << ' ';
8 cout << '\n';
9}
10
11 int main ()
12 {
13 int firstarray[] = {5, 10, 15};
14 int secondarray[] = {2, 4, 6, 8, 10};
15 printarray (firstarray,3);
16 printarray (secondarray,5);
17 }
5 10 15
2 4 6 8 10
In the code above, the first parameter (int arg[]) accepts any array whose elements are of
type int, whatever its length. For that reason, we have included a second parameter that tells
the function the length of each array that we pass to it as its first parameter. This allows the
for loop that prints out the array to know the range to iterate in the array passed, without
going out of range.
In a function declaration, it is also possible to include multidimensional arrays. The format
for a tridimensional array parameter is:
base_type[][depth][depth]
For example, a function with a multidimensional array as argument could be:

void procedure (int myarray[][3][4])
Notice that the first brackets [] are left empty, while the following ones specify sizes for their
respective dimensions. This is necessary in order for the compiler to be able to determine the
depth of each additional dimension.
In a way, passing an array as argument always loses a dimension. The reason behind is that,
for historical reasons, arrays cannot be directly copied, and thus what is really passed is a
pointer. This is a common source of errors for novice programmers. Although a clear
understanding of pointers, explained in a coming chapter, helps a lot.
Library arrays
The arrays explained above are directly implemented as a language feature, inherited from
the C language. They are a great feature, but by restricting its copy and easily decay into
pointers, they probably suffer from an excess of optimization.
To overcome some of these issues with language built-in arrays, C++ provides an alternative
array type as a standard container. It is a type template (a class template, in fact) defined in
header <array>.
Containers are a library feature that falls out of the scope of this tutorial, and thus the class
will not be explained in detail here. Suffice it to say that they operate in a similar way to
built-in arrays, except that they allow being copied (an actually expensive operation that
copies the entire block of memory, and thus to use with care) and decay into pointers only
when explicitly told to do so (by means of its member data).
Just as an example, these are two versions of the same example using the language built-in
array described in this chapter, and the container in the library:
language built-in array
#include <iostream>
container library array

#include <iostream>
#include <array>
int main()
{
int myarray[3] = {10,20,30};
int main()
{
array<int,3> myarray {10,20,30};
for (int i=0; i<3; ++i)

++myarray[i];
for (int i=0; i<myarray.size(); ++i)

++myarray[i];
for (int elem : myarray)

cout << elem << '\n';
for (int elem : myarray)

cout << elem << '\n';
As you can see, both kinds of arrays use the same syntax to access its elements: myarray[i].
Other than that, the main differences lay on the declaration of the array, and the inclusion of
an additional header for the library array. Notice also how it is easy to access the size of
the library array.
Character sequences
The string class has been briefly introduced in an earlier chapter. It is a very powerful class
to handle and manipulate strings of characters. However, because strings are, in fact,
sequences of characters, we can represent them also as plain arrays of elements of a character
type.
For example, the following array:
char foo [20];
is an array that can store up to 20 elements of type char. It can be represented as:
Therefore, this array has a capacity to store sequences of up to 20 characters. But this
capacity does not need to be fully exhausted: the array can also accommodate shorter
sequences. For example, at some point in a program, either the sequence "Hello" or the
sequence "Merry Christmas" can be stored in foo, since both would fit in a sequence with a
capacity for 20 characters.
By convention, the end of strings represented in character sequences is signaled by a special
character: the null character, whose literal value can be written as '\0' (backslash, zero).
In this case, the array of 20 elements of type char called foo can be represented storing the
character sequences "Hello"and "Merry Christmas" as:
Notice how after the content of the string itself, a null character ('\0') has been added in
order to indicate the end of the sequence. The panels in gray color represent char elements
with undetermined values.
Initialization of null-terminated character sequences

Because arrays of characters are ordinary arrays, they follow the same rules as these. For
example, to initialize an array of characters with some predetermined sequence of characters,
we can do it just like any other array:
char myword[] = { 'H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\0' };
The above declares an array of 6 elements of type char initialized with the characters that
form the word "Hello" plus anull character '\0' at the end.
But arrays of character elements have another way to be initialized: using string
literals directly.
In the expressions used in some examples in previous chapters, string literals have already
shown up several times. These are specified by enclosing the text between double quotes (").
For example:
"the result is: "
This is a string literal, probably used in some earlier example.

Sequences of characters enclosed in double-quotes (") are literal constants. And their type is,
in fact, a null-terminated array of characters. This means that string literals always have a null
character ('\0') automatically appended at the end.
Therefore, the array of char elements called myword can be initialized with a null-terminated
sequence of characters by either one of these two statements:
1 char myword[] = { 'H', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o', '\0' };
2 char myword[] = "Hello";
In both cases, the array of characters myword is declared with a size of 6 elements of
type char: the 5 characters that compose the word "Hello", plus a final null character
('\0'), which specifies the end of the sequence and that, in the second case, when using
double quotes (") it is appended automatically.
Please notice that here we are talking about initializing an array of characters at the moment it
is being declared, and not about assigning values to them later (once they have already been
declared). In fact, because string literals are regular arrays, they have the same restrictions as
these, and cannot be assigned values.
Expressions (once myword has already been declared as above), such as:
1 myword = "Bye";
2 myword[] = "Bye";
would not be valid, like neither would be:

myword = { 'B', 'y', 'e', '\0' };
This is because arrays cannot be assigned values. Note, though, that each of its elements can
be assigned a value individually. For example, this would be correct:
1 myword[0]
2 myword[1]
3 myword[2]
4 myword[3]
=
=
=
=
'B';
'y';
'e';
'\0';
Strings and null-terminated character sequences

Plain arrays with null-terminated sequences of characters are the typical types used in the C
language to represent strings (that is why they are also known as C-strings). In C++, even
though the standard library defines a specific type for strings (class string), still, plain arrays
with null-terminated sequences of characters (C-strings) are a natural way of representing
strings in the language; in fact, string literals still always produce null-terminated character
sequences, and not string objects.
In the standard library, both representations for strings (C-strings and library strings) coexist,
and most functions requiring strings are overloaded to support both.
For example, cin and cout support null-terminated sequences directly, allowing them to be
directly extracted from cin or inserted into cout, just like strings. For example:
1 // strings and NTCS:
3 #include <string>
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 char question1[] = "What is your name? ";
9 string question2 = "Where do you live? ";
10 char answer1 [80];
11 string answer2;
12 cout << question1;
What is your name? Homer

Where do you live? Greece
Hello, Homer from Greece!
13
14
15
16
17
18
19 }
cin >> answer1;

cout << question2;
cin >> answer2;
cout << "Hello, " << answer1;
cout << " from " << answer2 << "!\n";
return 0;
In this example, both arrays of characters using null-terminated sequences and strings are
used. They are quite interchangeable in their use together with cin and cout, but there is a
notable difference in their declarations: arrays have a fixed size that needs to be specified
either implicit or explicitly when declared; question1 has a size of exactly 20 characters
(including the terminating null-characters) and answer1 has a size of 80 characters; while
strings are simply strings, no size is specified. This is due to the fact that strings have a
dynamic size determined during runtime, while the size of arrays is determined on
compilation, before the program runs.
In any case, null-terminated character sequences and strings are easily transformed from one
another:
Null-terminated character sequences can be transformed into strings implicitly, and strings
can be transformed into null-terminated character sequences by using either of string's
member functions c_str or data:
1 char myntcs[] = "some text";
2 string mystring = myntcs; // convert c-string to string
3 cout << mystring;
// printed as a library string
4 cout << mystring.c_str(); // printed as a c-string
(note: both c_str and data members of string are equivalent)
Pointers
In earlier chapters, variables have been explained as locations in the computer's memory
which can be accessed by their identifier (their name). This way, the program does not need
to care about the physical address of the data in memory; it simply uses the identifier
whenever it needs to refer to the variable.
For a C++ program, the memory of a computer is like a succession of memory cells, each one
byte in size, and each with a unique address. These single-byte memory cells are ordered in a
way that allows data representations larger than one byte to occupy memory cells that have
consecutive addresses.
This way, each cell can be easily located in the memory by means of its unique address. For
example, the memory cell with the address 1776 always follows immediately after the cell
with address 1775 and precedes the one with 1777, and is exactly one thousand cells
after 776 and exactly one thousand cells before 2776.
When a variable is declared, the memory needed to store its value is assigned a specific
location in memory (its memory address). Generally, C++ programs do not actively decide
the exact memory addresses where its variables are stored. Fortunately, that task is left to the
environment where the program is run - generally, an operating system that decides the
particular memory locations on runtime. However, it may be useful for a program to be able
to obtain the address of a variable during runtime in order to access data cells that are at a
certain position relative to it.
Address-of operator (&)

The address of a variable can be obtained by preceding the name of a variable with an
ampersand sign (&), known asaddress-of operator. For example:
foo = &myvar;
This would assign the address of variable myvar to foo; by preceding the name of the
variable myvar with the address-of operator (&), we are no longer assigning the content of the
variable itself to foo, but its address.
The actual address of a variable in memory cannot be known before runtime, but let's assume,
in order to help clarify some concepts, that myvar is placed during runtime in the memory
address 1776.
In this case, consider the following code fragment:
1 myvar = 25;
2 foo = &myvar;
3 bar = myvar;
The values contained in each variable after the execution of this are shown in the following
diagram:
First, we have assigned the value 25 to myvar (a variable whose address in memory we
assumed to be 1776).
The second statement assigns foo the address of myvar, which we have assumed to be 1776.
Finally, the third statement, assigns the value contained in myvar to bar. This is a standard
assignment operation, as already done many times in earlier chapters.
The main difference between the second and third statements is the appearance of
the address-of operator (&).
The variable that stores the address of another variable (like foo in the previous example) is
what in C++ is called apointer. Pointers are a very powerful feature of the language that has
many uses in lower level programming. A bit later, we will see how to declare and use
pointers.
Dereference operator (*)

As just seen, a variable which stores the address of another variable is called a pointer.
Pointers are said to "point to" the variable whose address they store.
An interesting property of pointers is that they can be used to access the variable they point to
directly. This is done by preceding the pointer name with the dereference operator (*). The
operator itself can be read as "value pointed to by".
Therefore, following with the values of the previous example, the following statement:
baz = *foo;
This could be read as: "baz equal to value pointed to by foo", and the statement would
actually assign the value 25 tobaz, since foo is 1776, and the value pointed to
by 1776 (following the example above) would be 25.
It is important to clearly differentiate that foo refers to the value 1776, while *foo (with an
asterisk * preceding the identifier) refers to the value stored at address 1776, which in this
case is 25. Notice the difference of including or not including the dereference operator (I
have added an explanatory comment of how each of these two expressions could be read):
1 baz = foo;
2 baz = *foo;
// baz equal to foo (1776)

// baz equal to value pointed to by foo (25)
The reference and dereference operators are thus complementary:
&
is the address-of operator, and can be read simply as "address of"
is the dereference operator, and can be read as "value pointed to by"
Thus, they have sort of opposite meanings: An address obtained with & can be dereferenced
with *.
Earlier, we performed the following two assignment operations:
1 myvar = 25;
2 foo = &myvar;
Right after these two statements, all of the following expressions would give true as result:
1 myvar == 25
2 &myvar == 1776
3 foo == 1776
4 *foo == 25
The first expression is quite clear, considering that the assignment operation performed
on myvar was myvar=25. The second one uses the address-of operator (&), which returns the
address of myvar, which we assumed it to have a value of1776. The third one is somewhat
obvious, since the second expression was true and the assignment operation performed
on foo was foo=&myvar. The fourth expression uses the dereference operator (*) that can be
read as "value pointed to by", and the value pointed to by foo is indeed 25.
So, after all that, you may also infer that for as long as the address pointed by foo remains
unchanged, the following expression will also be true:
*foo == myvar
Declaring pointers
Due to the ability of a pointer to directly refer to the value that it points to, a pointer has
different properties when it points to a char than when it points to an int or a float. Once
dereferenced, the type needs to be known. And for that, the declaration of a pointer needs to
include the data type the pointer is going to point to.
The declaration of pointers follows this syntax:
type * name;
where type is the data type pointed to by the pointer. This type is not the type of the pointer
itself, but the type of the data the pointer points to. For example:
1 int * number;
2 char * character;
3 double * decimals;
These are three declarations of pointers. Each one is intended to point to a different data type,
but, in fact, all of them are pointers and all of them are likely going to occupy the same
amount of space in memory (the size in memory of a pointer depends on the platform where
the program runs). Nevertheless, the data to which they point to do not occupy the same
amount of space nor are of the same type: the first one points to an int, the second one to
a char, and the last one to adouble. Therefore, although these three example variables are all
of them pointers, they actually have different types:int*, char*, and double* respectively,
depending on the type they point to.
Note that the asterisk (*) used when declaring a pointer only means that it is a pointer (it is
part of its type compound specifier), and should not be confused with the dereference
operator seen a bit earlier, but which is also written with an asterisk (*). They are simply two
different things represented with the same sign.
Let's see an example on pointers:
1 // my first pointer
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int firstvalue, secondvalue;
8 int * mypointer;
9
10 mypointer = &firstvalue;
11 *mypointer = 10;
12 mypointer = &secondvalue;
13 *mypointer = 20;
14 cout << "firstvalue is " << firstvalue <<
15 '\n';
16 cout << "secondvalue is " << secondvalue <<
17 '\n';
return 0;
}
firstvalue is 10
secondvalue is 20
Notice that even though neither firstvalue nor secondvalue are directly set any value in
the program, both end up with a value set indirectly through the use of mypointer. This is
how it happens:
First, mypointer is assigned the address of firstvalue using the address-of operator (&). Then,
the value pointed to bymypointer is assigned a value of 10. Because, at this
moment, mypointer is pointing to the memory location offirstvalue, this in fact modifies
the value of firstvalue.
In order to demonstrate that a pointer may point to different variables during its lifetime in a
program, the example repeats the process with secondvalue and that same
pointer, mypointer.
Here is an example a little bit more elaborated:
1 // more pointers
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int firstvalue = 5, secondvalue = 15;
8 int * p1, * p2;
9
10 p1 = &firstvalue; // p1 = address of firstvalue
11 p2 = &secondvalue; // p2 = address of secondvalue
12 *p1 = 10;
// value pointed to by p1 = 10
13 *p2 = *p1;
// value pointed to by p2 = value
14 pointed by p1
15 p1 = p2;
// p1 = p2 (value of pointer is copied)
16 *p1 = 20;
// value pointed by p1 = 20
17
18 cout << "firstvalue is " << firstvalue << '\n';
19 cout << "secondvalue is " << secondvalue << '\n';
20 return 0;
}
firstvalue is 10
secondvalue is 20
Each assignment operation includes a comment on how each line could be read: i.e.,
replacing ampersands (&) by "address of", and asterisks (*) by "value pointed to by".
Notice that there are expressions with pointers p1 and p2, both with and without
the dereference operator (*). The meaning of an expression using the dereference
operator (*) is very different from one that does not. When this operator precedes the pointer
name, the expression refers to the value being pointed, while when a pointer name appears
without this operator, it refers to the value of the pointer itself (i.e., the address of what the
pointer is pointing to).
Another thing that may call your attention is the line:
int * p1, * p2;
This declares the two pointers used in the previous example. But notice that there is an
asterisk (*) for each pointer, in order for both to have type int* (pointer to int). This is
required due to the precedence rules. Note that if, instead, the code was:
int * p1, p2;
would indeed be of type int*, but p2 would be of type int. Spaces do not matter at all for
this purpose. But anyway, simply remembering to put one asterisk per pointer is enough for
most pointer users interested in declaring multiple pointers per statement. Or even better: use
a different statemet for each variable.
p1
Pointers and arrays
The concept of arrays is related to that of pointers. In fact, arrays work very much like
pointers to their first elements, and, actually, an array can always be implicitly converted to
the pointer of the proper type. For example, consider these two declarations:
1 int myarray [20];
2 int * mypointer;
The following assignment operation would be valid:

mypointer = myarray;
After that, mypointer and myarray would be equivalent and would have very similar
properties. The main difference being that mypointer can be assigned a different address,
whereas myarray can never be assigned anything, and will always represent the same block
of 20 elements of type int. Therefore, the following assignment would not be valid:
myarray = mypointer;
Let's see an example that mixes arrays and pointers:

1 // more pointers
4
5 int main ()
6{
7 int numbers[5];
8 int * p;
9 p = numbers; *p = 10;
10 p++; *p = 20;
11 p = &numbers[2]; *p = 30;
12 p = numbers + 3; *p = 40;
13 p = numbers; *(p+4) = 50;
14 for (int n=0; n<5; n++)
15
cout << numbers[n] << ", ";
16 return 0;
17 }
10, 20, 30, 40, 50,
Pointers and arrays support the same set of operations, with the same meaning for both. The
main difference being that pointers can be assigned new addresses, while arrays cannot.
In the chapter about arrays, brackets ([]) were explained as specifying the index of an
element of the array. Well, in fact these brackets are a dereferencing operator known as offset
operator. They dereference the variable they follow just as *does, but they also add the
number between brackets to the address being dereferenced. For example:
1 a[5] = 0;
2 *(a+5) = 0;
// a [offset of 5] = 0
// pointed by (a+5) = 0
These two expressions are equivalent and valid, not only if a is a pointer, but also if a is an
array. Remember that if an array, its name can be used just like a pointer to its first element.
Pointer initialization
Pointers can be initialized to point to specific locations at the very moment they are defined:
1 int myvar;
2 int * myptr = &myvar;
The resulting state of variables after this code is the same as after:
1 int myvar;
2 int * myptr;
3 myptr = &myvar;
When pointers are initialized, what is initialized is the address they point to (i.e., myptr),
never the value being pointed (i.e., *myptr). Therefore, the code above shall not be confused
with:
1 int myvar;
2 int * myptr;
3 *myptr = &myvar;
Which anyway would not make much sense (and is not valid code).
The asterisk (*) in the pointer declaration (line 2) only indicates that it is a pointer, it is not
the dereference operator (as in line 3). Both things just happen to use the same sign: *. As
always, spaces are not relevant, and never change the meaning of an expression.
Pointers can be initialized either to the address of a variable (such as in the case above), or to
the value of another pointer (or array):
1 int myvar;
2 int *foo = &myvar;
3 int *bar = foo;
Pointer arithmetics
To conduct arithmetical operations on pointers is a little different than to conduct them on
regular integer types. To begin with, only addition and subtraction operations are allowed; the
others make no sense in the world of pointers. But both addition and subtraction have a
slightly different behavior with pointers, according to the size of the data type to which they
point.
When fundamental data types were introduced, we saw that types have different sizes. For
example: char always has a size of 1 byte, short is generally larger than that,
and int and long are even larger; the exact size of these being dependent on the system. For
example, let's imagine that in a given system, char takes 1 byte, short takes 2 bytes,
andlong takes 4.
Suppose now that we define three pointers in this compiler:
1 char *mychar;
2 short *myshort;
3 long *mylong;
and that we know that they point to the memory locations 1000, 2000, and 3000,
respectively.
Therefore, if we write:
1 ++mychar;
2 ++myshort;
3 ++mylong;
mychar,
as one would expect, would contain the value 1001. But not so
obviously, myshort would contain the value 2002, and mylong would contain 3004, even
though they have each been incremented only once. The reason is that, when adding one to a
pointer, the pointer is made to point to the following element of the same type, and, therefore,
the size in bytes of the type it points to is added to the pointer.
This is applicable both when adding and subtracting any number to a pointer. It would happen
exactly the same if we wrote:
1 mychar = mychar + 1;
2 myshort = myshort + 1;
3 mylong = mylong + 1;
Regarding the increment (++) and decrement (--) operators, they both can be used as either
prefix or suffix of an expression, with a slight difference in behavior: as a prefix, the
increment happens before the expression is evaluated, and as a suffix, the increment happens
after the expression is evaluated. This also applies to expressions incrementing and
decrementing pointers, which can become part of more complicated expressions that also
include dereference operators (*). Remembering operator precedence rules, we can recall that
postfix operators, such as increment and decrement, have higher precedence than prefix
operators, such as the dereference operator (*). Therefore, the following expression:
*p++
is equivalent to *(p++). And what it does is to increase the value of p (so it now points to the
next element), but because++ is used as postfix, the whole expression is evaluated as the
value pointed originally by the pointer (the address it pointed to before being incremented).
Essentially, these are the four possible combinations of the dereference operator with both the
prefix and suffix versions of the increment operator (the same being applicable also to the
decrement operator):
1 *p++
// same as *(p++): increment pointer, and dereference
2 unincremented address
3 *++p
// same as *(++p): increment pointer, and dereference incremented
4 address
++*p
// same as ++(*p): dereference pointer, and increment the value
it points to
(*p)++ // dereference pointer, and post-increment the value it points to
A typical -but not so simple- statement involving these operators is:

*p++ = *q++;
Because ++ has a higher precedence than *, both p and q are incremented, but because both
increment operators (++) are used as postfix and not prefix, the value assigned
to *p is *q before both p and q are incremented. And then both are incremented. It would be
roughly equivalent to:
1 *p = *q;
2 ++p;
3 ++q;
Like always, parentheses reduce confusion by adding legibility to expressions.
Pointers and const
Pointers can be used to access a variable by its address, and this access may include
modifying the value pointed. But it is also possible to declare pointers that can access the
pointed value to read it, but not to modify it. For this, it is enough with qualifying the type
pointed by the pointer as const. For example:
1 int x;
2 int y = 10;
3 const int * p = &y;
4 x = *p;
// ok: reading p
5 *p = x;
// error: modifying p, which is const-qualified
Here p points to a variable, but points to it in a const-qualified manner, meaning that it can
read the value pointed, but it cannot modify it. Note also, that the expression &y is of
type int*, but this is assigned to a pointer of type const int*. This is allowed: a pointer to
non-const can be implicitly converted to a pointer to const. But not the other way around! As
a safety feature, pointers to const are not implicitly convertible to pointers to non-const.
One of the use cases of pointers to const elements is as function parameters: a function that
takes a pointer to non-const as parameter can modify the value passed as argument, while a
function that takes a pointer to const as parameter cannot.
1 // pointers as arguments:
4
5 void increment_all (int* start, int* stop)
6{
7 int * current = start;
8 while (current != stop) {
9
++(*current); // increment value pointed
10
++current;
// increment pointer
11 }
12 }
13
14 void print_all (const int* start, const int*
15 stop)
16 {
17 const int * current = start;
18 while (current != stop) {
19
cout << *current << '\n';
20
++current;
// increment pointer
21 }
22 }
23
24 int main ()
25 {
26 int numbers[] = {10,20,30};
27 increment_all (numbers,numbers+3);
28 print_all (numbers,numbers+3);
29 return 0;
}
11
21
31
Note that print_all uses pointers that point to constant elements. These pointers point to
constant content they cannot modify, but they are not constant themselves: i.e., the pointers
can still be incremented or assigned different addresses, although they cannot modify the
content they point to.
And this is where a second dimension to constness is added to pointers: Pointers can also be
themselves const. And this is specified by appending const to the pointed type (after the
asterisk):
1 int x;
2
int
3 const int
4
int
5 const int
*
p1
*
p2
* const p3
* const p4
=
=
=
=
&x;
&x;
&x;
&x;
//
//
//
//
non-const pointer to non-const int

non-const pointer to const int
const pointer to non-const int
const pointer to const int
The syntax with const and pointers is definitely tricky, and recognizing the cases that best
suit each use tends to require some experience. In any case, it is important to get constness
with pointers (and references) right sooner rather than later, but you should not worry too
much about grasping everything if this is the first time you are exposed to the mix
ofconst and pointers. More use cases will show up in coming chapters.
To add a little bit more confusion to the syntax of const with pointers, the const qualifier
can either precede or follow the pointed type, with the exact same meaning:
1 const int * p2a = &x;
2 int const * p2b = &x;
//
non-const pointer to const int
// also non-const pointer to const int
As with the spaces surrounding the asterisk, the order of const in this case is simply a matter
of style. This chapter uses a prefix const, as for historical reasons this seems to be more
extended, but both are exactly equivalent. The merits of each style are still intensely debated
on the internet.
Pointers and string literals

As pointed earlier, string literals are arrays containing null-terminated character sequences.
In earlier sections, string literals have been used to be directly inserted into cout, to initialize
strings and to initialize arrays of characters.
But they can also be accessed directly. String literals are arrays of the proper array type to
contain all its characters plus the terminating null-character, with each of the elements being
of type const char (as literals, they can never be modified). For example:
const char * foo = "hello";
This declares an array with the literal representation for "hello", and then a pointer to its
first element is assigned to foo. If we imagine that "hello" is stored at the memory locations
that start at address 1702, we can represent the previous declaration as:
Note that here foo is a pointer and contains the value 1702, and not 'h', nor "hello",
although 1702 indeed is the address of both of these.
The pointer foo points to a sequence of characters. And because pointers and arrays behave
essentially in the same way in expressions, foo can be used to access the characters in the
same way arrays of null-terminated character sequences are. For example:
1 *(foo+4)
2 foo[4]
Both expressions have a value of 'o' (the fifth element of the array).
Pointers to pointers
C++ allows the use of pointers that point to pointers, that these, in its turn, point to data (or
even to other pointers). The syntax simply requires an asterisk (*) for each level of
indirection in the declaration of the pointer:
1 char a;
2 char * b;
3 char ** c;
4 a = 'z';
5 b = &a;
6 c = &b;
This, assuming the randomly chosen memory locations for each variable of 7230, 8092,
and 10502, could be represented as:
With the value of each variable represented inside its corresponding cell, and their respective
addresses in memory represented by the value under them.
The new thing in this example is variable c, which is a pointer to a pointer, and can be used in
three different levels of indirection, each one of them would correspond to a different value:
is of type char** and a value of 8092
*c
**c
is of type char* and a value of 7230

is of type char and a value of 'z'
void pointers
The void type of pointer is a special type of pointer. In C++, void represents the absence of
type. Therefore, voidpointers are pointers that point to a value that has no type (and thus also
an undetermined length and undetermined dereferencing properties).
This gives void pointers a great flexibility, by being able to point to any data type, from an
integer value or a float to a string of characters. In exchange, they have a great limitation: the
data pointed by them cannot be directly dereferenced (which is logical, since we have no type
to dereference to), and for that reason, any address in a void pointer needs to be transformed
into some other pointer type that points to a concrete data type before being dereferenced.
One of its possible uses may be to pass generic parameters to a function. For example:
1 // increaser
4
5 void increase (void* data, int psize)
6{
7 if ( psize == sizeof(char) )
8 { char* pchar; pchar=(char*)data; ++
9 (*pchar); }
10 else if (psize == sizeof(int) )
11 { int* pint; pint=(int*)data; ++(*pint); }
12 }
13
14 int main ()
15 {
16 char a = 'x';
17 int b = 1602;
18 increase (&a,sizeof(a));
19 increase (&b,sizeof(b));
20 cout << a << ", " << b << '\n';
21 return 0;
}
y, 1603
is an operator integrated in the C++ language that returns the size in bytes of its
argument. For non-dynamic data types, this value is a constant. Therefore, for
example, sizeof(char) is 1, because char is has always a size of one byte.
sizeof
Invalid pointers and null pointers

In principle, pointers are meant to point to valid addresses, such as the address of a variable
or the address of an element in an array. But pointers can actually point to any address,
including addresses that do not refer to any valid element. Typical examples of this
are uninitialized pointers and pointers to nonexistent elements of an array:
1 int * p;
2
3 int myarray[10];
4 int * q = myarray+20;
// uninitialized pointer (local variable)

// element out of bounds
Neither p nor q point to addresses known to contain a value, but none of the above statements
causes an error. In C++, pointers are allowed to take any address value, no matter whether
there actually is something at that address or not. What can cause an error is to dereference
such a pointer (i.e., actually accessing the value they point to). Accessing such a pointer
causes undefined behavior, ranging from an error during runtime to accessing some random
value.
But, sometimes, a pointer really needs to explicitly point to nowhere, and not just an invalid
address. For such cases, there exists a special value that any pointer type can take: the null
pointer value. This value can be expressed in C++ in two ways: either with an integer value
of zero, or with the nullptr keyword:
1 int * p = 0;
2 int * q = nullptr;
Here, both p and q are null pointers, meaning that they explicitly point to nowhere, and they
both actually compare equal: all null pointers compare equal to other null pointers. It is also
quite usual to see the defined constant NULL be used in older code to refer to the null
pointer value:
int * r = NULL;
is defined in several headers of the standard library, and is defined as an alias of

some null pointer constant value (such as 0 or nullptr).
NULL
Do not confuse null pointers with void pointers! A null pointer is a value that any pointer can
take to represent that it is pointing to "nowhere", while a void pointer is a type of pointer that
can point to somewhere without a specific type. One refers to the value stored in the pointer,
and the other to the type of data it points to.
Pointers to functions
C++ allows operations with pointers to functions. The typical use of this is for passing a
function as an argument to another function. Pointers to functions are declared with the same
syntax as a regular function declaration, except that the name of the function is enclosed
between parentheses () and an asterisk (*) is inserted before the name:
1 // pointer to functions

4
5 int addition (int a, int b)
6 { return (a+b); }
7
8 int subtraction (int a, int b)
9 { return (a-b); }
10
11 int operation (int x, int y, int (*functocall)
12 (int,int))
13 {
14 int g;
15 g = (*functocall)(x,y);
16 return (g);
17 }
18
19 int main ()
20 {
21 int m,n;
22 int (*minus)(int,int) = subtraction;
23
24 m = operation (7, 5, addition);
25 n = operation (20, m, minus);
26 cout <<n;
27 return 0;
}
In the example above, minus is a pointer to a function that has two parameters of type int. It
is directly initialized to point to the function subtraction:
int (* minus)(int,int) = subtraction;
Dynamic memory
In the programs seen in previous chapters, all memory needs were determined before
program execution by defining the variables needed. But there may be cases where the
memory needs of a program can only be determined during runtime. For example, when the
memory needed depends on user input. On these cases, programs need to dynamically
allocate memory, for which the C++ language integrates the operators new and delete.
Operators new and new[]

Dynamic memory is allocated using operator new. new is followed by a data type specifier
and, if a sequence of more than one element is required, the number of these within
brackets []. It returns a pointer to the beginning of the new block of memory allocated. Its
syntax is:
pointer = new type
pointer = new type [number_of_elements]
The first expression is used to allocate memory to contain one single element of type type.
The second one is used to allocate a block (an array) of elements of type type,
where number_of_elements is an integer value representing the amount of these. For

example:
1 int * foo;
2 foo = new int [5];
In this case, the system dynamically allocates space for five elements of type int and returns
a pointer to the first element of the sequence, which is assigned to foo (a pointer).
Therefore, foo now points to a valid block of memory with space for five elements of
type int.
Here, foo is a pointer, and thus, the first element pointed to by foo can be accessed either
with the expression foo[0] or the expression *foo (both are equivalent). The second element
can be accessed either with foo[1] or *(foo+1), and so on...
There is a substantial difference between declaring a normal array and allocating dynamic
memory for a block of memory using new. The most important difference is that the size of a
regular array needs to be a constant expression, and thus its size has to be determined at the
moment of designing the program, before it is run, whereas the dynamic memory allocation
performed by new allows to assign memory during runtime using any variable value as size.
The dynamic memory requested by our program is allocated by the system from the memory
heap. However, computer memory is a limited resource, and it can be exhausted. Therefore,
there are no guarantees that all requests to allocate memory using operator new are going to
be granted by the system.
C++ provides two standard mechanisms to check if the allocation was successful:
One is by handling exceptions. Using this method, an exception of type bad_alloc is thrown
when the allocation fails. Exceptions are a powerful C++ feature explained later in these
tutorials. But for now, you should know that if this exception is thrown and it is not handled
by a specific handler, the program execution is terminated.
This exception method is the method used by default by new, and is the one used in a
declaration like:
foo = new int [5];
// if allocation fails, an exception is thrown
The other method is known as nothrow, and what happens when it is used is that when a
memory allocation fails, instead of throwing a bad_alloc exception or terminating the
program, the pointer returned by new is a null pointer, and the program continues its
execution normally.
This method can be specified by using a special object called nothrow, declared in
header <new>, as argument for new:
foo = new (nothrow) int [5];
In this case, if the allocation of this block of memory fails, the failure can be detected by
checking if foo is a null pointer:
1 int * foo;
2 foo = new (nothrow) int [5];
3 if (foo == nullptr) {
4 // error assigning memory. Take measures.
5}
This nothrow method is likely to produce less efficient code than exceptions, since it implies
explicitly checking the pointer value returned after each and every allocation. Therefore, the
exception mechanism is generally preferred, at least for critical allocations. Still, most of the
coming examples will use the nothrow mechanism due to its simplicity.
Operators delete and delete[]

In most cases, memory allocated dynamically is only needed during specific periods of time
within a program; once it is no longer needed, it can be freed so that the memory becomes
available again for other requests of dynamic memory. This is the purpose of
operator delete, whose syntax is:
1 delete pointer;
2 delete[] pointer;
The first statement releases the memory of a single element allocated using new, and the
second one releases the memory allocated for arrays of elements using new and a size in
brackets ([]).
The value passed as argument to delete shall be either a pointer to a memory block
previously allocated with new, or anull pointer (in the case of a null pointer, delete produces
no effect).
1 // rememb-o-matic
3 #include <new>
5
6 int main ()
7{
8 int i,n;
9 int * p;
10 cout << "How many numbers would you like to
11 type? ";
12 cin >> i;
How many numbers would you like to t

Enter number : 75
Enter number : 436
Enter number : 1067
Enter number : 8
Enter number : 32
You have entered: 75, 436, 1067, 8,
13 p= new (nothrow) int[i];

14 if (p == nullptr)
15
cout << "Error: memory could not be
16 allocated";
17 else
18 {
19
for (n=0; n<i; n++)
20
{
21
cout << "Enter number: ";
22
cin >> p[n];
23
}
24
cout << "You have entered: ";
25
for (n=0; n<i; n++)
26
cout << p[n] << ", ";
27
delete[] p;
28 }
return 0;
}
Notice how the value within brackets in the new statement is a variable value entered by the
user (i), not a constant expression:
p= new (nothrow) int[i];
There always exists the possibility that the user introduces a value for i so big that the system
cannot allocate enough memory for it. For example, when I tried to give a value of 1 billion
to the "How many numbers" question, my system could not allocate that much memory for
the program, and I got the text message we prepared for this case (Error: memory could
not be allocated).
It is considered good practice for programs to always be able to handle failures to allocate
memory, either by checking the pointer value (if nothrow) or by catching the proper
exception.
Dynamic memory in C
C++ integrates the operators new and delete for allocating dynamic memory. But these were
not available in the C language; instead, it used a library solution, with the
functions malloc, calloc, realloc and free, defined in the header<cstdlib> (known
as <stdlib.h> in C). The functions are also available in C++ and can also be used to allocate
and deallocate dynamic memory.
Note, though, that the memory blocks allocated by these functions are not necessarily
compatible with those returned bynew, so they should not be mixed; each one should be
handled with its own set of functions or operators.
Data structures
Data structures
A data structure is a group of data elements grouped together under one name. These data
elements, known asmembers, can have different types and different lengths. Data structures
can be declared in C++ using the following syntax:
struct type_name {
member_type1 member_name1;
.
.
} object_names;
Where type_name is a name for the structure type, object_name can be a set of valid
identifiers for objects that have the type of this structure. Within braces {}, there is a list with
the data members, each one is specified with a type and a valid identifier as its name.
For example:
1 struct product {
2 int weight;
3 double price;
4} ;
5
6 product apple;
7 product banana, melon;
This declares a structure type, called product, and defines it having two
members: weight and price, each of a different fundamental type. This declaration creates a
new type (product), which is then used to declare three objects (variables) of this
type: apple, banana, and melon. Note how once product is declared, it is used just like any
other type.
Right at the end of the struct definition, and before the ending semicolon (;), the optional
field object_names can be used to directly declare objects of the structure type. For example,
the structure objects apple, banana, and melon can be declared at the moment the data
structure type is defined:
1 struct product {
2 int weight;
3 double price;
4 } apple, banana, melon;
In this case, where object_names are specified, the type name (product) becomes
optional: struct requires either atype_name or at least one name in object_names, but not
necessarily both.
It is important to clearly differentiate between what is the structure type name (product), and
what is an object of this type (apple, banana, and melon). Many objects (such
as apple, banana, and melon) can be declared from a single structure type (product).
Once the three objects of a determined structure type are declared (apple, banana,
and melon) its members can be accessed directly. The syntax for that is simply to insert a dot
(.) between the object name and the member name. For example, we could operate with any
of these elements as if they were standard variables of their respective types:
1 apple.weight
2 apple.price
3 banana.weight
4 banana.price
5 melon.weight
6 melon.price
Each one of these has the data type corresponding to the member they refer
to: apple.weight, banana.weight, andmelon.weight are of type int,
while apple.price, banana.price, and melon.price are of type double.
Here is a real example with structure types in action:
1 // example about structures
3 #include <string>
6
7 struct movies_t {
8 string title;
9 int year;
10 } mine, yours;
11
12 void printmovie (movies_t movie);
13
14 int main ()
15 {
16 string mystr;
17
18 mine.title = "2001 A Space Odyssey";
19 mine.year = 1968;
20
21 cout << "Enter title: ";
22 getline (cin,yours.title);
23 cout << "Enter year: ";
25 stringstream(mystr) >> yours.year;
26
27 cout << "My favorite movie is:\n ";
28 printmovie (mine);
29 cout << "And yours is:\n ";
30 printmovie (yours);
31 return 0;
32 }
33
34 void printmovie (movies_t movie)
35 {
36 cout << movie.title;
37 cout << " (" << movie.year << ")\n";
38 }
Enter title: Alien

Enter year: 1979
My favorite movie is:
2001 A Space Odyssey (1968)
And yours is:
Alien (1979)
The example shows how the members of an object act just as regular variables. For example,
the member yours.year is a valid variable of type int, and mine.title is a valid variable
of type string.
But the objects mine and yours are also variables with a type (of type movies_t). For
example, both have been passed to function printmovie just as if they were simple variables.
Therefore, one of the features of data structures is the ability to refer to both their members
individually or to the entire structure as a whole. In both cases using the same identifier: the
name of the structure.
Because structures are types, they can also be used as the type of arrays to construct tables or
databases of them:
1 // array of structures
3 #include <string>
6
7 struct movies_t {
8 string title;
9 int year;
10 } films [3];
11
12 void printmovie (movies_t movie);
13
14 int main ()
15 {
16 string mystr;
17 int n;
18
19 for (n=0; n<3; n++)
20 {
21
cout << "Enter title: ";
22
getline (cin,films[n].title);
23
cout << "Enter year: ";
24
getline (cin,mystr);
25
stringstream(mystr) >> films[n].year;
26 }
27
28 cout << "\nYou have entered these movies:\n";
29 for (n=0; n<3; n++)
30
printmovie (films[n]);
31 return 0;
32 }
33
34 void printmovie (movies_t movie)
35 {
36 cout << movie.title;
37 cout << " (" << movie.year << ")\n";
38 }
Enter
Enter
Enter
Enter
Enter
Enter
title: Blade Runner

year: 1982
title: The Matrix
year: 1999
title: Taxi Driver
year: 1976
You have entered these movies:

Blade Runner (1982)
The Matrix (1999)
Taxi Driver (1976)
Pointers to structures
Like any other type, structures can be pointed to by its own type of pointers:
1 struct movies_t {
2 string title;
3 int year;
4 };
5
6 movies_t amovie;
7 movies_t * pmovie;
Here amovie is an object of structure type movies_t, and pmovie is a pointer to point to
objects of structure type movies_t. Therefore, the following code would also be valid:
pmovie = &amovie;
The value of the pointer pmovie would be assigned the address of object amovie.
Now, let's see another example that mixes pointers and structures, and will serve to introduce
a new operator: the arrow operator (->):
1 // pointers to structures
3 #include <string>
6
7 struct movies_t {
8 string title;
9 int year;
10 };
11
12 int main ()
13 {
14 string mystr;
15
16 movies_t amovie;
17 movies_t * pmovie;
18 pmovie = &amovie;
19
20 cout << "Enter title: ";
21 getline (cin, pmovie->title);
22 cout << "Enter year: ";
24 (stringstream) mystr >> pmovie->year;
25
26 cout << "\nYou have entered:\n";
27 cout << pmovie->title;
28 cout << " (" << pmovie->year << ")\n";
29
30 return 0;
31 }
Enter title: Invasion of the body snat

Enter year: 1978
You have entered:
Invasion of the body snatchers (1978)
The arrow operator (->) is a dereference operator that is used exclusively with pointers to
objects that have members. This operator serves to access the member of an object directly
from its address. For example, in the example above:
pmovie->title
is, for all purposes, equivalent to:

(*pmovie).title
Both expressions, pmovie->title and (*pmovie).title are valid, and both access the
member title of the data structure pointed by a pointer called pmovie. It is definitely
something different than:
*pmovie.title
which is rather equivalent to:

*(pmovie.title)
This would access the value pointed by a hypothetical pointer member called title of the
structure object pmovie (which is not the case, since title is not a pointer type). The
following panel summarizes possible combinations of the operators for pointers and for
structure members:
Expression
a.b
What is evaluated
Member b of object a
Equivalent
a->b
Member b of object pointed to by a
(*a).b
*a.b
Value pointed to by member b of object a
*(a.b)
Nesting structures
Structures can also be nested in such a way that an element of a structure is itself another
structure:
1 struct movies_t {
2 string title;
3 int year;
4 };
5
6 struct friends_t {
7 string name;
8 string email;
9 movies_t favorite_movie;
10 } charlie, maria;
11
12 friends_t * pfriends = &charlie;
After the previous declarations, all of the following expressions would be valid:
1 charlie.name
2 maria.favorite_movie.title
3 charlie.favorite_movie.year
4 pfriends->favorite_movie.year
(where, by the way, the last two expressions refer to the same member).
Other data types

Type aliases (typedef / using)
A type alias is a different name by which a type can be identified. In C++, any valid type can
be aliased so that it can be referred to with a different identifier.
In C++, there are two syntaxes for creating such type aliases: The first, inherited from the C
language, uses the typedefkeyword:
typedef existing_type new_type_name ;
where existing_type is any type, either fundamental or compound, and new_type_name is

an identifier with the new name given to the type.
For example:
1 typedef
2 typedef
3 typedef
4 typedef
char C;
unsigned int WORD;
char * pChar;
char field [50];
This defines four type aliases: C, WORD, pChar, and field as char, unsigned
int, char* and char[50], respectively. Once these aliases are defined, they can be used in
any declaration just like any other valid type:
1 C mychar, anotherchar, *ptc1;
2 WORD myword;
3 pChar ptc2;
4 field name;
More recently, a second syntax to define type aliases was introduced in the C++ language:
using new_type_name = existing_type ;
For example, the same type aliases as above could be defined as:
1 using
2 using
3 using
4 using
C = char;
WORD = unsigned int;
pChar = char *;
field = char [50];
Both aliases defined with typedef and aliases defined with using are semantically
equivalent. The only difference being that typedef has certain limitations in the realm of
templates that using has not. Therefore, using is more generic, although typedef has a
longer history and is probably more common in existing code.
Note that neither typedef nor using create new distinct data types. They only create
synonyms of existing types. That means that the type of myword above, declared with
type WORD, can as well be considered of type unsigned int; it does not really matter, since
both are actually referring to the same type.
Type aliases can be used to reduce the length of long or confusing type names, but they are
most useful as tools to abstract programs from the underlying types they use. For example, by
using an alias of int to refer to a particular kind of parameter instead of using int directly, it
allows for the type to be easily replaced by long (or some other type) in a later version,
without having to change every instance where it is used.
Unions
Unions allow one portion of memory to be accessed as different data types. Its declaration
and use is similar to the one of structures, but its functionality is totally different:
union type_name {
.
.
} object_names;
This creates a new union type, identified by type_name, in which all its member elements
occupy the same physical space in memory. The size of this type is the one of the largest
member element. For example:
1 union mytypes_t {
2 char c;
3 int i;
4 float f;
5 } mytypes;
declares an object (mytypes) with three members:

1 mytypes.c
2 mytypes.i
3 mytypes.f
Each of these members is of a different data type. But since all of them are referring to the
same location in memory, the modification of one of the members will affect the value of all
of them. It is not possible to store different values in them in a way that each is independent
of the others.
One of the uses of a union is to be able to access a value either in its entirety or as an array or
structure of smaller elements. For example:
1 union mix_t {
2 int l;
3 struct {
4
short hi;
5
short lo;
6
} s;
7 char c[4];
8 } mix;
If we assume that the system where this program runs has an int type with a size of 4 bytes,
and a short type of 2 bytes, the union defined above allows the access to the same group of 4
bytes: mix.l, mix.s and mix.c, and which we can use according to how we want to access
these bytes: as if they were a single value of type int, or as if they were two values of
type short, or as an array of char elements, respectively. The example mixes types, arrays,
and structures in the union to demonstrate different ways to access the data. For a littleendian system, this union could be represented as:
The exact alignment and order of the members of a union in memory depends on the system,
with the possibility of creating portability issues.
Anonymous unions
When unions are members of a class (or structure), they can be declared with no name. In this
case, they becomeanonymous unions, and its members are directly accessible from objects by
their member names. For example, see the differences between these two structure
declarations:
structure with regular union

struct book1_t {
char title[50];
char author[50];
union {
float dollars;
int yen;
} price;
} book1;
structure with anonymous union

struct book2_t {
char title[50];
char author[50];
union {
float dollars;
int yen;
};
} book2;
The only difference between the two types is that in the first one, the member union has a
name (price), while in the second it has not. This affects the way to access
members dollars and yen of an object of this type. For an object of the first type (with a
regular union), it would be:
1 book1.price.dollars
2 book1.price.yen
whereas for an object of the second type (which has an anonymous union), it would be:
1 book2.dollars
2 book2.yen
Again, remember that because it is a member union (not a member structure), the
members dollars and yen actually share the same memory location, so they cannot be used
to store two different values simultaneously. The price can be set in dollars or in yen, but
not in both simultaneously.
Enumerated types (enum)

Enumerated types are types that are defined with a set of custom identifiers, known
as enumerators, as possible values. Objects of these enumerated types can take any of these
enumerators as value.
Their syntax is:
enum type_name {
value1,
value2,
value3,
.
.
} object_names;
This creates the type type_name, which can take any of value1, value2, value3, ... as value.
Objects (variables) of this type can directly be instantiated as object_names.
For example, a new type of variable called colors_t could be defined to store colors with
the following declaration:
enum colors_t {black, blue, green, cyan, red, purple, yellow, white};
Notice that this declaration includes no other type, neither fundamental nor compound, in its
definition. To say it another way, somehow, this creates a whole new data type from scratch
without basing it on any other existing type. The possible values that variables of this new
type color_t may take are the enumerators listed within braces. For example, once
the colors_t enumerated type is declared, the following expressions will be valid:
1 colors_t mycolor;
2
3 mycolor = blue;
4 if (mycolor == green) mycolor = red;
Values of enumerated types declared with enum are implicitly convertible to the integer
type int, and vice versa. In fact, the elements of such an enum are always assigned an integer
numerical equivalent internally, of which they become an alias. If it is not specified
otherwise, the integer value equivalent to the first possible value is 0, the equivalent to the
second is 1, to the third is 2, and so on... Therefore, in the data type colors_t defined
above, black would be equivalent to 0, blue would be equivalent to 1, green to 2, and so
on...
A specific integer value can be specified for any of the possible values in the enumerated
type. And if the constant value that follows it is itself not given its own value, it is
automatically assumed to be the same value plus one. For example:
1 enum months_t { january=1, february, march, april,
2
may, june, july, august,
3
september, october, november, december} y2k;
In this case, the variable y2k of the enumerated type months_t can contain any of the 12
possible values that go fromjanuary to december and that are equivalent to the values
between 1 and 12 (not between 0 and 11, since january has been made equal to 1).
Because enumerated types declared with enum are implicitly convertible to int, and each of
the enumerator values is actually of type int, there is no way to distinguish 1 from january they are the exact same value of the same type. The reasons for this are historical and are
inheritance of the C language.
Enumerated types with enum class

But, in C++, it is possible to create real enum types that are neither implicitly convertible
to int and that neither have enumerator values of type int, but of the enum type itself, thus
preserving type safety. They are declared with enum class(or enum struct) instead of
just enum:
enum class Colors {black, blue, green, cyan, red, purple, yellow,
white};
Each of the enumerator values of an enum class type needs to be scoped into its type (this is
actually also possible withenum types, but it is only optional). For example:
1 Colors mycolor;
2
3 mycolor = Colors::blue;
4 if (mycolor == Colors::green) mycolor = Colors::red;
Enumerated types declared with enum class also have more control over their underlying
type; it may be any integral data type, such as char, short or unsigned int, which
essentially serves to determine the size of the type. This is specified by a colon and the
underlying type following the enumerated type. For example:
enum class EyeColor : char {blue, green, brown};
Here, Eyecolor is a distinct type with the same size of a char (1 byte).
Classes (I)
Classes are an expanded concept of data structures: like data structures, they can contain data
members, but they can also contain functions as members.
An object is an instantiation of a class. In terms of variables, a class would be the type, and an
object would be the variable.
Classes are defined using either keyword class or keyword struct, with the following
syntax:
class class_name {
access_specifier_1:
member1;
access_specifier_2:
member2;
...
} object_names;
Where class_name is a valid identifier for the class, object_names is an optional list of
names for objects of this class. The body of the declaration can contain members, which can
either be data or function declarations, and optionally access specifiers.
Classes have the same format as plain data structures, except that they can also include
functions and have these new things called access specifiers. An access specifier is one of the
following three keywords: private, public or protected. These specifiers modify the
access rights for the members that follow them:
private
protected
Finally, public members are accessible from anywhere where the object is visible.
members of a class are accessible only from within other members of the
same class (or from their"friends").
members are accessible from other members of the same class (or from
their "friends"), but also from members of their derived classes.
By default, all members of a class declared with the class keyword have private access for
all its members. Therefore, any member that is declared before any other access specifier has
private access automatically. For example:
1 class Rectangle {
2
int width, height;
3 public:
4
void set_values (int,int);
5
int area (void);
6 } rect;
Declares a class (i.e., a type) called Rectangle and an object (i.e., a variable) of this class,
called rect. This class contains four members: two data members of
type int (member width and member height) with private access (because private is the
default access level) and two member functions with public access: the
functions set_values and area, of which for now we have only included their declaration,
but not their definition.
Notice the difference between the class name and the object name: In the previous
example, Rectangle was the class name (i.e., the type), whereas rect was an object of
type Rectangle. It is the same relationship int and a have in the following declaration:
int a;
where int is the type name (the class) and a is the variable name (the object).
After the declarations of Rectangle and rect, any of the public members of object rect can
be accessed as if they were normal functions or normal variables, by simply inserting a dot
(.) between object name and member name. This follows the same syntax as accessing the
members of plain data structures. For example:
1 rect.set_values (3,4);
2 myarea = rect.area();
The only members of rect that cannot be accessed from outside the class
are width and height, since they have private access and they can only be referred to from
within other members of that same class.
Here is the complete example of class Rectangle:
1 // classes example
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
9
int area() {return width*height;}
10 };
11
12 void Rectangle::set_values (int x, int y) {
13 width = x;
14 height = y;
15 }
16
17 int main () {
18 Rectangle rect;
20 cout << "area: " << rect.area();
21 return 0;
22 }
area: 12
This example reintroduces the scope operator (::, two colons), seen in earlier chapters in
relation to namespaces. Here it is used in the definition of function set_values to define a
member of a class outside the class itself.
Notice that the definition of the member function area has been included directly within the
definition of class Rectanglegiven its extreme simplicity. Conversely, set_values it is
merely declared with its prototype within the class, but its definition is outside it. In this
outside definition, the operator of scope (::) is used to specify that the function being defined
is a member of the class Rectangle and not a regular non-member function.
The scope operator (::) specifies the class to which the member being declared belongs,
granting exactly the same scope properties as if this function definition was directly included
within the class definition. For example, the functionset_values in the previous example has
access to the variables width and height, which are private members of classRectangle,
and thus only accessible from other members of the class, such as this.
The only difference between defining a member function completely within the class
definition or to just include its declaration in the function and define it later outside the class,
is that in the first case the function is automatically considered an inline member function by
the compiler, while in the second it is a normal (not-inline) class member function. This
causes no differences in behavior, but only on possible compiler optimizations.
Members width and height have private access (remember that if nothing else is specified,
all members of a class defined with keyword class have private access). By declaring them
private, access from outside the class is not allowed. This makes sense, since we have already
defined a member function to set values for those members within the object: the member
function set_values. Therefore, the rest of the program does not need to have direct access
to them. Perhaps in a so simple example as this, it is difficult to see how restricting access to
these variables may be useful, but in greater projects it may be very important that values
cannot be modified in an unexpected way (unexpected from the point of view of the object).
The most important property of a class is that it is a type, and as such, we can declare
multiple objects of it. For example, following with the previous example of class Rectangle,
we could have declared the object rectb in addition to objectrect:
1 // example: one class, two objects
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
9
int area () {return width*height;}
10 };
11
12 void Rectangle::set_values (int x, int y) {
13 width = x;
14 height = y;
15 }
16
17 int main () {
18 Rectangle rect, rectb;
20 rectb.set_values (5,6);
21 cout << "rect area: " << rect.area() << endl;
22 cout << "rectb area: " << rectb.area() <<
23 endl;
24 return 0;
}
rect area: 12
rectb area: 30
In this particular case, the class (type of the objects) is Rectangle, of which there are two
instances (i.e., objects): rectand rectb. Each one of them has its own member variables and
member functions.
Notice that the call to rect.area() does not give the same result as the call
to rectb.area(). This is because each object of class Rectangle has its own
variables width and height, as they -in some way- have also their own function
membersset_value and area that operate on the object's own member variables.
Classes allow programming using object-oriented paradigms: Data and functions are both
members of the object, reducing the need to pass and carry handlers or other state variables as
arguments to functions, because they are part of the object whose member is called. Notice
that no arguments were passed on the calls to rect.area or rectb.area. Those member
functions directly used the data members of their respective objects rect and rectb.
Constructors
What would happen in the previous example if we called the member function area before
having called set_values? An undetermined result, since the
members width and height had never been assigned a value.
In order to avoid that, a class can include a special function called its constructor, which is
automatically called whenever a new object of this class is created, allowing the class to
initialize member variables or allocate storage.
This constructor function is declared just like a regular member function, but with a name
that matches the class name and without any return type; not even void.
The Rectangle class above can easily be improved by implementing a constructor:
1 // example: class constructor
rect area: 12
rectb area: 30
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
Rectangle (int,int);
9
int area () {return (width*height);}
10 };
11
12 Rectangle::Rectangle (int a, int b) {
13 width = a;
14 height = b;
15 }
16
17 int main () {
18 Rectangle rect (3,4);
19 Rectangle rectb (5,6);
22 endl;
23 return 0;
}
The results of this example are identical to those of the previous example. But now,
class Rectangle has no member function set_values, and has instead a constructor that
performs a similar action: it initializes the values of width andheight with the arguments
passed to it.
Notice how these arguments are passed to the constructor at the moment at which the objects
of this class are created:
2 Rectangle rectb (5,6);
Constructors cannot be called explicitly as if they were regular member functions. They are
only executed once, when a new object of that class is created.
Notice how neither the constructor prototype declaration (within the class) nor the latter
constructor definition, have return values; not even void: Constructors never return values,
they simply initialize the object.
Overloading constructors
Like any other function, a constructor can also be overloaded with different versions taking
different parameters: with a different number of parameters and/or parameters of different
types. The compiler will automatically call the one whose parameters match the arguments:
1 // overloading class constructors
rect area: 12
rectb area: 25
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
Rectangle ();
9
Rectangle (int,int);
10
int area (void) {return (width*height);}
11 };
12
13 Rectangle::Rectangle () {
14 width = 5;
15 height = 5;
16 }
17
18 Rectangle::Rectangle (int a, int b) {
19 width = a;
20 height = b;
21 }
22
23 int main () {
25 Rectangle rectb;
28 endl;
29 return 0;
}
In the above example, two objects of class Rectangle are

constructed: rect and rectb. rect is constructed with two arguments, like in the example
before.
But this example also introduces a special kind constructor: the default constructor.
The default constructor is the constructor that takes no parameters, and it is special because it
is called when an object is declared but is not initialized with any arguments. In the example
above, the default constructor is called for rectb. Note how rectb is not even constructed
with an empty set of parentheses - in fact, empty parentheses cannot be used to call the
default constructor:
1 Rectangle rectb;
// ok, default constructor called
2 Rectangle rectc(); // oops, default constructor NOT called
This is because the empty set of parentheses would make of rectc a function declaration
instead of an object declaration: It would be a function that takes no arguments and returns a
value of type Rectangle.
Uniform initialization
The way of calling constructors by enclosing their arguments in parentheses, as shown above,
is known as functional form. But constructors can also be called with other syntaxes:
First, constructors with a single parameter can be called using the variable initialization
syntax (an equal sign followed by the argument):
class_name object_name = initialization_value;
More recently, C++ introduced the possibility of constructors to be called using uniform
initialization, which essentially is the same as the functional form, but using braces ({})
instead of parentheses (()):
class_name object_name { value, value, value, ... }
Optionally, this last syntax can include an equal sign before the braces.
Here is an example with four ways to construct objects of a class whose constructor takes a
single parameter:
1 // classes and uniform initialization
foo's circumference: 62.8319
4
5 class Circle {
6
double radius;
7 public:
8
Circle(double r) { radius = r; }
9
double circum() {return 2*radius*3.14159265;}
10 };
11
12 int main () {
13 Circle foo (10.0);
// functional form
14 Circle bar = 20.0;
// assignment init.
15 Circle baz {30.0};
// uniform init.
16 Circle qux = {40.0}; // POD-like
17
18 cout << "foo's circumference: " << foo.circum() <<
19 '\n';
20 return 0;
}
An advantage of uniform initialization over functional form is that, unlike parentheses, braces
cannot be confused with function declarations, and thus can be used to explicitly call default
constructors:
1 Rectangle rectb;
// default constructor called
2 Rectangle rectc(); // function declaration (default constructor NOT
3 called)
Rectangle rectd{}; // default constructor called
The choice of syntax to call constructors is largely a matter of style. Most existing code
currently uses functional form, and some newer style guides suggest to choose uniform
initialization over the others, even though it also has its potential pitfalls for its preference
of initializer_list as its type.
Member initialization in constructors

When a constructor is used to initialize other members, these other members can be
initialized directly, without resorting to statements in its body. This is done by inserting,
before the constructor's body, a colon (:) and a list of initializations for class members. For
example, consider a class with the following declaration:
1 class Rectangle {
2
int width,height;
3 public:
4
Rectangle(int,int);
5
6 };
The constructor for this class could be defined, as usual, as:

Rectangle::Rectangle (int x, int y) { width=x; height=y; }
But it could also be defined using member initialization as:

Rectangle::Rectangle (int x, int y) : width(x) { height=y; }
Or even:
Rectangle::Rectangle (int x, int y) : width(x), height(y) { }
Note how in this last case, the constructor does nothing else than initialize its members, hence
it has an empty function body.
For members of fundamental types, it makes no difference which of the ways above the
constructor is defined, because they are not initialized by default, but for member objects
(those whose type is a class), if they are not initialized after the colon, they are defaultconstructed.
Default-constructing all members of a class may or may always not be convenient: in some
cases, this is a waste (when the member is then reinitialized otherwise in the constructor), but
in some other cases, default-construction is not even possible (when the class does not have a
default constructor). In these cases, members shall be initialized in the member initialization
list. For example:
1 // member initialization
foo's volume: 6283.19
4
5 class Circle {
6
double radius;
7 public:
8
Circle(double r) : radius(r) { }
9
double area() {return
10 radius*radius*3.14159265;}
11 };
12
13 class Cylinder {
14
Circle base;
15
double height;
16 public:
17
Cylinder(double r, double h) : base (r),
18 height(h) {}
19
double volume() {return base.area() * height;}
20 };
21
22 int main () {
23 Cylinder foo (10,20);
24
25 cout << "foo's volume: " << foo.volume() << '\n';
return 0;
}
In this example, class Cylinder has a member object whose type is another class (base's
type is Circle). Because objects of class Circle can only be constructed with a
parameter, Cylinder's constructor needs to call base's constructor, and the only way to do
this is in the member initializer list.
These initializations can also use uniform initializer syntax, using braces {} instead of
parentheses ():
Cylinder::Cylinder (double r, double h) : base{r}, height{h} { }
Pointers to classes
Objects can also be pointed to by pointers: Once declared, a class becomes a valid type, so it
can be used as the type pointed to by a pointer. For example:
Rectangle * prect;
is a pointer to an object of class Rectangle.

Similarly as with plain data structures, the members of an object can be accessed directly
from a pointer by using the arrow operator (->). Here is an example with some possible
combinations:
1 // pointer to classes example
4
5 class Rectangle {
6 int width, height;
7 public:
8 Rectangle(int x, int y) : width(x), height(y) {}
9 int area(void) { return width * height; }
10 };
11
12
13 int main() {
14 Rectangle obj (3, 4);
15 Rectangle * foo, * bar, * baz;
16 foo = &obj;
17 bar = new Rectangle (5, 6);
18 baz = new Rectangle[2] { {2,5}, {3,6} };
19 cout << "obj's area: " << obj.area() << '\n';
20 cout << "*foo's area: " << foo->area() << '\n';
21 cout << "*bar's area: " << bar->area() << '\n';
22 cout << "baz[0]'s area:" << baz[0].area() << '\n';
23 cout << "baz[1]'s area:" << baz[1].area() << '\n';
24 delete bar;
25 delete[] baz;
26 return 0;
27 }
Edit & Run
This example makes use of several operators to operate on objects and pointers
(operators *, &, ., ->, []). They can be interpreted as:
expression
*x
pointed to by x
&x
address of x
can be read as
x.y
member y of object x
x->y
member y of object pointed to by x
(*x).y
member y of object pointed to by x (equivalent to the previous one)
x[0]
first object pointed to by x
x[1]
second object pointed to by x
x[n]
(n+1)th object pointed to by x
Most of these expressions have been introduced in earlier chapters. Most notably, the chapter
about arrays introduced the offset operator ([]) and the chapter about plain data structures
introduced the arrow operator (->).
Classes defined with struct and union

Classes can be defined not only with keyword class, but also with
keywords struct and union.
The keyword struct, generally used to declared plain data structures, can also be used to
declare classes that have member functions, with the same syntax as with keyword class.
The only difference between both is that members of classes declared with the
keyword struct have public access by default, while members of classes declared with the
keyword class have private access by default. For all other purposes both keywords are
equivalent in this context.
Conversely, the concept of unions is different from that of classes declared
with struct and class, since unions only store one data member at a time, but nevertheless
they are also classes and can thus also hold member functions. The default access in union
classes is public.
Classes (II)
Overloading operators
Classes, essentially, define new types to be used in C++ code. And types in C++ not only
interact with code by means of constructions and assignments. They also interact by means of
operators. For example, take the following operation on fundamental types:
1 int a, b, c;
2 a = b + c;
Here, different variables of a fundamental type (int) are applied the addition operator, and
then the assignment operator. For a fundamental arithmetic type, the meaning of such
operations is generally obvious and unambiguous, but it may not be so for certain class types.
For example:
1 struct myclass {
2 string product;
3 float price;
4 } a, b, c;
5 a = b + c;
Here, it is not obvious what the result of the addition operation on b and c does. In fact, this
code alone would cause a compilation error, since the type myclass has no defined behavior
for additions. However, C++ allows most operators to be overloaded so that their behavior
can be defined for just about any type, including classes. Here is a list of all the operators that
can be overloaded:
Overloadable operators
+
<<= >>=
~
&=
delete
*
/
==
!=
^=
|=
new[]
=
<
<=
>=
&&
||
delete[]
>
++
%=
+=
-[]
-=
%
()
*=
&
,
/=
^
->*
<<
!
->
>>
|
new
Operators are overloaded by means of operator functions, which are regular functions with
special names: their name begins by the operator keyword followed by the operator
sign that is overloaded. The syntax is:
type operator sign (parameters) { /*... body ...*/ }
For example, cartesian vectors are sets of two coordinates: x and y. The addition operation
two cartesian vectors is defined as the addition both x coordinates together, and
both y coordinates together. For example, adding the cartesian
vectors (3,1) and (1,2) together would result in (3+1,1+2) = (4,3). This could be
implemented in C++ with the following code:

1 // overloading operators example
4
5 class CVector {
6 public:
7
int x,y;
8
CVector () {};
9
CVector (int a,int b) : x(a), y(b) {}
10
CVector operator + (const CVector&);
11 };
12
13 CVector CVector::operator+ (const CVector&
14 param) {
15 CVector temp;
16 temp.x = x + param.x;
17 temp.y = y + param.y;
18 return temp;
19 }
20
21 int main () {
22 CVector foo (3,1);
23 CVector bar (1,2);
24 CVector result;
25 result = foo + bar;
26 cout << result.x << ',' << result.y << '\n';
27 return 0;
}
4,3
If confused about so many appearances of CVector, consider that some of them refer to the
class name (i.e., the type)CVector and some others are functions with that name (i.e.,
constructors, which must have the same name as the class). For example:
1 CVector (int, int) : x(a), y(b) {} // function name CVector
2 (constructor)
CVector operator+ (const CVector&); // function that returns a CVector
The function operator+ of class CVector overloads the addition operator (+) for that type.
of
Once declared, this function can be called either implicitly using the operator, or explicitly
using its functional name:
1 c = a + b;
2 c = a.operator+ (b);
Both expressions are equivalent.

The operator overloads are just regular functions which can have any behavior; there is
actually no requirement that the operation performed by that overload bears a relation to the
mathematical or usual meaning of the operator, although it is strongly recommended. For
example, a class that overloads operator+ to actually subtract or that
overloads operator==to fill the object with zeros, is perfectly valid, although using such a
class could be challenging.
The parameter expected for a member function overload for operations such as operator+ is
naturally the operand to the right hand side of the operator. This is common to all binary
operators (those with an operand to its left and one operand to its right). But operators can
come in diverse forms. Here you have a table with a summary of the parameters needed for
each of the different operators than can be overloaded (please, replace @ by the operator in
each case):
Expressio
Operator
Member function
n
@a
+ - * & ! ~ ++ -A::operator@()
a@
++ -A::operator@(int)
+ - * / % ^ & | < > == !=
a@b
A::operator@(B)
<= >= << >> && || ,
= += -= *= /= %= ^= &= |=
a@b
A::operator@(B)
<<= >>= []
A::operator()
a(b,c...) ()
(B,C...)
a->b
->
A::operator->()
(TYPE) a TYPE
A::operator TYPE()
Non-member
function
operator@(A)
operator@(A,int)
operator@(A,B)
-
Where a is an object of class A, b is an object of class B and c is an object of class C. TYPE is

just any type (that operators overloads the conversion to type TYPE).
Notice that some operators may be overloaded in two forms: either as a member function or
as a non-member function: The first case has been used in the example above for operator+.
But some operators can also be overloaded as non-member functions; In this case, the
operator function takes an object of the proper class as first argument.
For example:
1 // non-member operator overloads
4
5 class CVector {
6 public:
7
int x,y;
8
CVector () {}
4,3
9
CVector (int a, int b) : x(a), y(b) {}
10 };
11
12
13 CVector operator+ (const CVector& lhs, const CVector&
14 rhs) {
15 CVector temp;
16 temp.x = lhs.x + rhs.x;
17 temp.y = lhs.y + rhs.y;
18 return temp;
19 }
20
21 int main () {
22 CVector foo (3,1);
23 CVector bar (1,2);
24 CVector result;
25 result = foo + bar;
26 cout << result.x << ',' << result.y << '\n';
27 return 0;
}
The keyword this

The keyword this represents a pointer to the object whose member function is being
executed. It is used within a class's member function to refer to the object itself.
One of its uses can be to check if a parameter passed to a member function is the object itself.
For example:
1 // example on this
4
5 class Dummy {
6 public:
7
bool isitme (Dummy& param);
8 };
9
10 bool Dummy::isitme (Dummy& param)
11 {
12 if (&param == this) return true;
13 else return false;
14 }
15
16 int main () {
17 Dummy a;
18 Dummy* b = &a;
19 if ( b->isitme(a) )
20
cout << "yes, &a is b\n";
21 return 0;
22 }
yes, &a is b
It is also frequently used in operator= member functions that return objects by reference.
Following with the examples on cartesian vector seen before, its operator= function could
have been defined as:
1 CVector& CVector::operator= (const CVector& param)
2{
3 x=param.x;
4 y=param.y;
5 return *this;
6}
In fact, this function is very similar to the code that the compiler generates implicitly for this
class for operator=.
Static members
A class can contain static members, either data or functions.
A static data member of a class is also known as a "class variable", because there is only one
common variable for all the objects of that same class, sharing the same value: i.e., its value
is not different from one object of this class to another.
For example, it may be used for a variable within a class that can contain a counter with the
number of objects of that class that are currently allocated, as in the following example:
1 // static members in classes
4
5 class Dummy {
6 public:
7
static int n;
8
Dummy () { n++; };
9
~Dummy () { n--; };
10 };
11
12 int Dummy::n=0;
13
14 int main () {
15 Dummy a;
16 Dummy b[5];
17 Dummy * c = new Dummy;
18 cout << a.n << '\n';
19 delete c;
20 cout << Dummy::n << '\n';
21 return 0;
22 }
7
6
In fact, static members have the same properties as non-member variables but they enjoy
class scope. For that reason, and to avoid them to be declared several times, they cannot be
initialized directly in the class, but need to be initialized somewhere outside it. As in the
previous example:
int Dummy::n=0;
Because it is a common variable value for all the objects of the same class, it can be referred
to as a member of any object of that class or even directly by the class name (of course this is
only valid for static members):
1 cout << a.n;
2 cout << Dummy::n;
These two calls above are referring to the same variable: the static variable n within
class Dummy shared by all objects of this class.
Again, it is just like a non-member variable, but with a name that requires to be accessed like
a member of a class (or an object).
Classes can also have static member functions. These represent the same: members of a class
that are common to all object of that class, acting exactly as non-member functions but being
accessed like members of the class. Because they are like non-member functions, they cannot
access non-static members of the class (neither member variables nor member functions).
They neither can use the keyword this.
Const member functions

When an object of a class is qualified as a const object:
const MyClass myobject;
The access to its data members from outside the class is restricted to read-only, as if all its
data members were const for those accessing them from outside the class. Note though, that
the constructor is still called and is allowed to initialize and modify these data members:
1 // constructor on const object
4
5 class MyClass {
6 public:
7
int x;
8
MyClass(int val) : x(val) {}
9
int get() {return x;}
10 };
11
12 int main() {
13 const MyClass foo(10);
14 // foo.x = 20;
// not valid: x cannot be
15 modified
16 cout << foo.x << '\n'; // ok: data member x can be
17 read
return 0;
10
The member functions of a const object can only be called if they are themselves specified
as const members; in the example above, member get (which is not specified as const)
cannot be called from foo. To specify that a member is aconst member, the const keyword
shall follow the function prototype, after the closing parenthesis for its parameters:
int get() const {return x;}
Note that const can be used to qualify the type returned by a member function. This const is
not the same as the one which specifies a member as const. Both are independent and are
located at different places in the function prototype:
1 int get() const {return x;}
// const member function
2 const int& get() {return x;}
// member function returning a const&
3 const int& get() const {return x;} // const member function returning a
const&
Member functions specified to be const cannot modify non-static data members nor call
other non-const member functions. In essence, const members shall not modify the state of
an object.
objects are limited to access only members marked as const, but non-const objects
are not restricted and thus can access both const and non-const members alike.
const
You may think that anyway you are seldom going to declare const objects, and thus marking
all members that don't modify the object as const is not worth the effort, but const objects are
actually very common. Most functions taking classes as parameters actually take them
by const reference, and thus, these functions can only access their constmembers:
1 // const objects
4
5 class MyClass {
6
int x;
7 public:
8
9
const int& get() const {return x;}
10 };
11
12 void print (const MyClass& arg) {
13 cout << arg.get() << '\n';
14 }
15
16 int main() {
17 MyClass foo (10);
18 print(foo);
19
20 return 0;
21 }
10
If in this example, get was not specified as a const member, the call to arg.get() in
the print function would not be possible, because const objects only have access
to const member functions.
Member functions can be overloaded on their constness: i.e., a class may have two member
functions with identical signatures except that one is const and the other is not: in this case,
the const version is called only when the object is itself const, and the non-const version is
called when the object is itself non-const.
1 // overloading members on constness
4
5 class MyClass {
6
int x;
7 public:
8
9
const int& get() const {return x;}
10
int& get() {return x;}
11 };
12
13 int main() {
14 MyClass foo (10);
15 const MyClass bar (20);
16 foo.get() = 15;
// ok: get() returns int&
17 // bar.get() = 25;
// not valid: get() returns
18 const int&
19 cout << foo.get() << '\n';
20 cout << bar.get() << '\n';
21
22 return 0;
}
15
20
Class templates
Just like we can create function templates, we can also create class templates, allowing
classes to have members that use template parameters as types. For example:
2 class mypair {
3
T values [2];
4 public:
5
mypair (T first, T second)
6
{
7
values[0]=first; values[1]=second;
8
}
9 };
The class that we have just defined serves to store two elements of any valid type. For
example, if we wanted to declare an object of this class to store two integer values of
type int with the values 115 and 36 we would write:
mypair<int> myobject (115, 36);
This same class could also be used to create an object to store any other type, such as:
mypair<double> myfloats (3.0, 2.18);
The constructor is the only member function in the previous class template and it has been
defined inline within the class definition itself. In case that a member function is defined
outside the defintion of the class template, it shall be preceded with the template
<...> prefix:
1 // class templates
4
6 class mypair {
7
T a, b;
8 public:
9
mypair (T first, T second)
10
{a=first; b=second;}
11
T getmax ();
12 };
13
15 T mypair<T>::getmax ()
16 {
17 T retval;
18 retval = a>b? a : b;
19 return retval;
20 }
21
22 int main () {
23 mypair <int> myobject (100, 75);
24 cout << myobject.getmax();
25 return 0;
26 }
100
Notice the syntax of the definition of member function getmax:

2 T mypair<T>::getmax ()
Confused by so many T's? There are three T's in this declaration: The first one is the template
parameter. The second Trefers to the type returned by the function. And the third T (the one
between angle brackets) is also a requirement: It specifies that this function's template
parameter is also the class template parameter.
Template specialization
It is possible to define a different implementation for a template when a specific type is
passed as template argument. This is called a template specialization.
For example, let's suppose that we have a very simple class called mycontainer that can
store one element of any type and that has just one member function called increase, which
increases its value. But we find that when it stores an element of type char it would be more
convenient to have a completely different implementation with a function
memberuppercase, so we decide to declare a class template specialization for that type:
1 // template specialization
4
5 // class template:
7 class mycontainer {
8
T element;
9 public:
10
mycontainer (T arg) {element=arg;}
11
T increase () {return ++element;}
12 };
13
14 // class template specialization:
15 template <>
16 class mycontainer <char> {
17
char element;
18 public:
19
mycontainer (char arg) {element=arg;}
20
char uppercase ()
21
{
22
if ((element>='a')&&(element<='z'))
23
element+='A'-'a';
24
return element;
25
}
26 };
27
28 int main () {
29 mycontainer<int> myint (7);
30 mycontainer<char> mychar ('j');
31 cout << myint.increase() << endl;
32 cout << mychar.uppercase() << endl;
33 return 0;
34 }
8
J
This is the syntax used for the class template specialization:

template <> class mycontainer <char> { ... };
First of all, notice that we precede the class name with template<> , including an empty
parameter list. This is because all types are known and no template arguments are required
for this specialization, but still, it is the specialization of a class template, and thus it requires
to be noted as such.
But more important than this prefix, is the <char> specialization parameter after the class
template name. This specialization parameter itself identifies the type for which the template
class is being specialized (char). Notice the differences between the generic class template
and the specialization:
1 template <class T> class mycontainer { ... };
2 template <> class mycontainer <char> { ... };
The first line is the generic template, and the second one is the specialization.
When we declare specializations for a template class, we must also define all its members,
even those identical to the generic template class, because there is no "inheritance" of
members from the generic template to the specialization.
Special members
[NOTE: This chapter requires proper understanding of dynamically allocated memory]
Special member functions are member functions that are implicitly defined as member of
classes under certain circumstances. There are six:
Member function
Default constructor
Destructor
Copy constructor
Copy assignment
Move constructor
Move assignment
typical form for class C:

C::C();
C::~C();
C::C (const C&);
C& operator= (const C&);
C::C (C&&);
C& operator= (C&&);
Let's examine each of these:
Default constructor
The default constructor is the constructor called when objects of a class are declared, but are
not initialized with any arguments.
If a class definition has no constructors, the compiler assumes the class to have an implicitly
defined default constructor. Therefore, after declaring a class like this:
1 class Example {
2 public:
3
int total;
4
void accumulate (int x) { total += x; }
5 };
The compiler assumes that Example has a default constructor. Therefore, objects of this class
can be constructed by simply declaring them without any arguments:
Example ex;
But as soon as a class has some constructor taking any number of parameters explicitly
declared, the compiler no longer provides an implicit default constructor, and no longer
allows the declaration of new objects of that class without arguments. For example, the
following class:
1 class Example2 {
2 public:
3
int total;
4
Example2 (int initial_value) : total(initial_value) { };
5
void accumulate (int x) { total += x; };
6 };
Here, we have declared a constructor with a parameter of type int. Therefore the following
object declaration would be correct:
Example2 ex (100);
// ok: calls constructor
But the following:

Example2 ex;
// not valid: no default constructor
Would not be valid, since the class has been declared with an explicit constructor taking one
argument and that replaces the implicit default constructor taking none.
Therefore, if objects of this class need to be constructed without arguments, the
proper default constructor shall also be declared in the class. For example:
1 // classes and default constructors
bar's content: Example
3 #include <string>
5
6 class Example3 {
7
string data;
8 public:
9
Example3 (const string& str) : data(str) {}
10
Example3() {}
11
const string& content() const {return data;}
12 };
13
14 int main () {
15 Example3 foo;
16 Example3 bar ("Example");
17
18 cout << "bar's content: " << bar.content() <<
19 '\n';
20 return 0;
}
Here, Example3 has a default constructor (i.e., a constructor without parameters) defined as
an empty block:
Example3() {};
This allows objects of class Example3 to be constructed without arguments (like foo was
declared in this example). Normally, a default constructor like this is implicitly defined for all
classes that have no other constructors and thus no explicit definition is required. But in this
case, Example3 has another constructor:
Example3 (const string& str);
And when any constructor is explicitly declared in a class, no implicit default constructors is
automatically provided.
Destructor
Destructors fulfill the opposite functionality of constructors: They are responsible for the
necessary cleanup needed by a class when its lifetime ends. The classes we have defined in
previous chapters did not allocate any resource and thus did not really require any clean up.
But now, let's imagine that the class in the last example allocates dynamic memory to store
the string it had as data member; in this case, it would be very useful to have a function called
automatically at the end of the object's life in charge of releasing this memory. To do this, we
use a destructor. A destructor is a member function very similar to adefault constructor: it
takes no arguments and returns nothing, not even void. It also uses the class name as its own
name, but preceded with a tilde sign (~):
1 // destructors
3 #include <string>
5
6 class Example4 {
7
string* ptr;
8 public:
9
// constructors:
10
Example4() : ptr(new string) {}
11
Example4 (const string& str) : ptr(new
12 string(str)) {}
13
// destructor:
14
~Example4 () {delete ptr;}
15
// access content:
16
const string& content() const {return *ptr;}
17 };
18
19 int main () {
20 Example4 foo;
21 Example4 bar ("Example");
22
23 cout << "bar's content: " << bar.content() <<
24 '\n';
return 0;
}
On construction, Example4 allocates storage for a string. Storage that is later released by
the destructor.
The destructor for an object is called at the end of its lifetime; in the case of foo and bar this
happens at the end of function main.
Copy constructor
When an object is passed a named object of its own type as argument, its copy constructor is
invoked in order to construct a copy.
A copy constructor is a constructor whose first parameter is of type reference to the
class itself (possibly const qualified) and which can be invoked with a single argument of
this type. For example, for a class MyClass, the copy constructor may have the following
signature:
MyClass::MyClass (const MyClass&);
If a class has no custom copy nor move constructors (or assignments) defined, an
implicit copy constructor is provided. This copy constructor simply performs a copy of its
own members. For example, for a class such as:
1 class MyClass {
2 public:
3
int a, b; string c;
4 };
An implicit copy constructor is automatically defined. The definition assumed for this
function performs a shallow copy, roughly equivalent to:
MyClass::MyClass(const MyClass& x) : a(x.a), b(x.b), c(x.c) {}
This default copy constructor may suit the needs of many classes. But shallow copies only
copy the members of the class themselves, and this is probably not what we expect for classes
like class Example4 we defined above, because it contains pointers of which it handles its
storage. For that class, performing a shallow copy means that the pointer value is copied, but
not the content itself; This means that both objects (the copy and the original) would be
sharing a single stringobject (they would both be pointing to the same object), and at some
point (on destruction) both objects would try to delete the same block of memory, probably
causing the program to crash on runtime. This can be solved by defining the following
custom copy constructor that performs a deep copy:
1 // copy constructor: deep copy
3 #include <string>
5
6 class Example5 {
7
string* ptr;
8 public:
9
Example5 (const string& str) : ptr(new string(str)) {}
10
11
// copy constructor:
12
Example5 (const Example5& x) : ptr(new
13 string(x.content())) {}
14
// access content:
15
16 };
17
18 int main () {
19 Example5 foo ("Example");
20 Example5 bar = foo;
21
22 cout << "bar's content: " << bar.content() << '\n';
23 return 0;
}
The deep copy performed by this copy constructor allocates storage for a new string, which is
initialized to contain a copy of the original object. In this way, both objects (copy and
original) have distinct copies of the content stored in different locations.
Copy assignment
Objects are not only copied on construction, when they are initialized: They can also be
copied on any assignment operation. See the difference:
1 MyClass foo;
2 MyClass bar (foo);
3 called
4 MyClass baz = foo;
called
foo = bar;
called
// object initialization: copy constructor

// object initialization: copy constructor
// object already initialized: copy assignment
Note that baz is initialized on construction using an equal sign, but this is not an assignment
operation! (although it may look like one): The declaration of an object is not an assignment
operation, it is just another of the syntaxes to call single-argument constructors.
The assignment on foo is an assignment operation. No object is being declared here, but an
operation is being performed on an existing object; foo.
The copy assignment operator is an overload of operator= which takes
a value or reference of the class itself as parameter. The return value is generally a reference
to *this (although this is not required). For example, for a classMyClass, the copy
assignment may have the following signature:
MyClass& operator= (const MyClass&);
The copy assignment operator is also a special function and is also defined implicitly if a
class has no custom copy normove assignments (nor move constructor) defined.
But again, the implicit version performs a shallow copy which is suitable for many classes,
but not for classes with pointers to objects they handle its storage, as is the case in Example5.
In this case, not only the class incurs the risk of deleting the pointed object twice, but the
assignment creates memory leaks by not deleting the object pointed by the object before the
assignment. These issues could be solved with a copy assignment that deletes the previous
object and performs a deep copy:
1 Example5& operator= (const Example5& x) {
2 delete ptr;
// delete currently pointed string
3 ptr = new string (x.content()); // allocate space for new string, and
4 copy
5 return *this;
6}
Or even better, since its string member is not constant, it could re-utilize the
same string object:
1 Example5& operator= (const Example5& x) {
2 *ptr = x.content();
3 return *this;
4}
Move constructor and assignment

Similar to copying, moving also uses the value of an object to set the value to another object.
But, unlike copying, the content is actually transferred from one object (the source) to the
other (the destination): the source loses that content, which is taken over by the destination.
This moving only happens when the source of the value is an unnamed object.
Unnamed objects are objects that are temporary in nature, and thus haven't even been given a
name. Typical examples of unnamed objects are return values of functions or type-casts.
Using the value of a temporary object such as these to initialize another object or to assign its
value, does not really require a copy: the object is never going to be used for anything else,
and thus, its value can be moved into the destination object. These cases trigger the move
constructor and move assignments:
The move constructor is called when an object is initialized on construction using an
unnamed temporary. Likewise, themove assignment is called when an object is assigned the
value of an unnamed temporary:
1 MyClass fn();
2 MyClass foo;
3 MyClass bar = foo;
4 MyClass baz = fn();
5 foo = bar;
6 baz = MyClass();
//
//
//
//
//
//
function returning a MyClass object

default constructor
copy constructor
move constructor
copy assignment
move assignment
Both the value returned by fn and the value constructed with MyClass are unnamed
temporaries. In these cases, there is no need to make a copy, because the unnamed object is
very short-lived and can be acquired by the other object when this is a more efficient
operation.
The move constructor and move assignment are members that take a parameter of
type rvalue reference to the classitself:
1 MyClass (MyClass&&);
2 MyClass& operator= (MyClass&&);
// move-constructor
// move-assignment
An rvalue reference is specified by following the type with two ampersands (&&). As a
parameter, an rvalue referencematches arguments of temporaries of this type.
The concept of moving is most useful for objects that manage the storage they use, such as
objects that allocate storage with new and delete. In such objects, copying and moving are
really different operations:
- Copying from A to B means that new memory is allocated to B and then the entire content
of A is copied to this new memory allocated for B.
- Moving from A to B means that the memory already allocated to A is transferred to B
without allocating any new storage. It involves simply copying the pointer.
For example:
1 // move constructor/assignment
3 #include <string>
5
6 class Example6 {
7
string* ptr;
8 public:
9
Example6 (const string& str) : ptr(new
10 string(str)) {}
11
12
// move constructor
foo's content: Example
13
Example6 (Example6&& x) : ptr(x.ptr)
14 {x.ptr=nullptr;}
15
// move assignment
16
Example6& operator= (Example6&& x) {
17
delete ptr;
18
ptr = x.ptr;
19
x.ptr=nullptr;
20
return *this;
21
}
22
// access content:
23
24
// addition:
25
Example6 operator+(const Example6& rhs) {
26
return Example6(content()+rhs.content());
27
}
28 };
29
30
31 int main () {
32 Example6 foo ("Exam");
33 Example6 bar = Example6("ple");
// move34 construction
35
36 foo = foo + bar;
// move37 assignment
cout << "foo's content: " << foo.content() << '\n';

return 0;
Compilers already optimize many cases that formally require a move-construction call in
what is known as Return Value Optimization. Most notably, when the value returned by a
function is used to initialize an object. In these cases, themove constructor may actually never
get called.
Note that even though rvalue references can be used for the type of any function parameter, it
is seldom useful for uses other than the move constructor. Rvalue references are tricky, and
unnecessary uses may be the source of errors quite difficult to track.
Implicit members
The six special members functions described above are members implicitly declared on
classes under certain circumstances:
Member
function
Default
constructor
Destructor
Copy
constructor
Copy
assignment
implicitly defined:
default
definition:
if no other constructors
does nothing
if no destructor
does nothing
copies all
members
copies all
members
if no move constructor and no move assignment

if no move constructor and no move assignment
Move
constructor
Move
assignment
if no destructor, no copy constructor and no copy nor moves all

move assignment
members
if no destructor, no copy constructor and no copy nor moves all
move assignment
members
Notice how not all special member functions are implicitly defined in the same cases. This is
mostly due to backwards compatibility with C structures and earlier C++ versions, and in fact
some include deprecated cases. Fortunately, each class can select explicitly which of these
members exist with their default definition or which are deleted by using the
keywords default and delete, respectively. The syntax is either one of:
function_declaration = default;
function_declaration = delete;
For example:
1 // default and delete implicit members
bar's area: 200
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
Rectangle (int x, int y) : width(x),
9 height(y) {}
10
Rectangle() = default;
11
Rectangle (const Rectangle& other) = delete;
12
13 };
14
15 int main () {
16 Rectangle foo;
17 Rectangle bar (10,20);
18
19 cout << "bar's area: " << bar.area() << '\n';
20 return 0;
}
Here, Rectangle can be constructed either with two int arguments or be defaultconstructed (with no arguments). It cannot however be copy-constructed from
another Rectangle object, because this function has been deleted. Therefore, assuming the
objects of the last example, the following statement would not be valid:
Rectangle baz (foo);
It could, however, be made explicitly valid by defining its copy constructor as:
Rectangle::Rectangle (const Rectangle& other) = default;
Which would be essentially equivalent to:
Rectangle::Rectangle (const Rectangle& other) : width(other.width),

height(other.height) {}
Note that, the keyword default does not define a member function equal to the default
constructor (i.e., where default constructor means constructor with no parameters), but equal
to the constructor that would be implicitly defined if not deleted.
In general, and for future compatibility, classes that explicitly define one copy/move
constructor or one copy/move assignment but not both, are encouraged to specify
either delete or default on the other special member functions they don't explicitly define.
Friendship and inheritance

Friend functions
In principle, private and protected members of a class cannot be accessed from outside the
same class in which they are declared. However, this rule does not apply to "friends".
Friends are functions or classes declared with the friend keyword.
A non-member function can access the private and protected members of a class if it is
declared a friend of that class. That is done by including a declaration of this external
function within the class, and preceding it with the keywordfriend:
1 // friend functions
4
5 class Rectangle {
6
int width, height;
7 public:
8
Rectangle() {}
9
Rectangle (int x, int y) : width(x),
10 height(y) {}
11
int area() {return width * height;}
12
friend Rectangle duplicate (const
13 Rectangle&);
14 };
15
16 Rectangle duplicate (const Rectangle& param)
17 {
18 Rectangle res;
19 res.width = param.width*2;
20 res.height = param.height*2;
21 return res;
22 }
23
24 int main () {
25 Rectangle foo;
26 Rectangle bar (2,3);
27 foo = duplicate (bar);
24
28
cout << foo.area() << '\n';

return 0;
}
The duplicate function is a friend of class Rectangle. Therefore, function duplicate is

able to access the members widthand height (which are private) of different objects of
type Rectangle. Notice though that neither in the declaration ofduplicate nor in its later
use in main, member function duplicate is considered a member of class Rectangle. It
isn't! It simply has access to its private and protected members without being a member.
Typical use cases of friend functions are operations that are conducted between two different
classes accessing private or protected members of both.
Friend classes
Similar to friend functions, a friend class is a class whose members have access to the private
or protected members of another class:
1 // friend class
4
5 class Square;
6
7 class Rectangle {
8
int width, height;
9 public:
10
int area ()
11
{return (width * height);}
12
void convert (Square a);
13 };
14
15 class Square {
16 friend class Rectangle;
17 private:
18
int side;
19 public:
20
Square (int a) : side(a) {}
21 };
22
23 void Rectangle::convert (Square a) {
24 width = a.side;
25 height = a.side;
26 }
27
28 int main () {
29 Rectangle rect;
30 Square sqr (4);
31 rect.convert(sqr);
32 cout << rect.area();
33 return 0;
34 }
16
In this example, class Rectangle is a friend of class Square allowing Rectangle's member
functions to access private and protected members of Square. More
concretely, Rectangle accesses the member variable Square::side, which describes the
side of the square.
There is something else new in this example: at the beginning of the program, there is an
empty declaration of classSquare. This is necessary because
class Rectangle uses Square (as a parameter in member convert),
and Square usesRectangle (declaring it a friend).
Friendships are never corresponded unless specified: In our example, Rectangle is
considered a friend class by Square, but Square is not considered a friend by Rectangle.
Therefore, the member functions of Rectangle can access the protected and private members
of Square but not the other way around. Of course, Square could also be declared friend
ofRectangle, if needed, granting such an access.
Another property of friendships is that they are not transitive: The friend of a friend is not
considered a friend unless explicitly specified.
Inheritance between classes

Classes in C++ can be extended, creating new classes which retain characteristics of the base
class. This process, known as inheritance, involves a base class and a derived class:
The derived class inherits the members of the base class, on top of which it can add its own
members.
For example, let's imagine a series of classes to describe two kinds of polygons: rectangles
and triangles. These two polygons have certain common properties, such as the values needed
to calculate their areas: they both can be described simply with a height and a width (or base).
This could be represented in the world of classes with a class Polygon from which we would
derive the two other ones:Rectangle and Triangle:
The Polygon class would contain members that are common for both types of polygon. In
our case: width and height. And Rectangle and Triangle would be its derived classes,
with specific features that are different from one type of polygon to the other.
Classes that are derived from others inherit all the accessible members of the base class. That
means that if a base class includes a member A and we derive a class from it with another
member called B, the derived class will contain both member A and member B.
The inheritance relationship of two classes is declared in the derived class. Derived classes
definitions use the following syntax:
class derived_class_name: public base_class_name
{ /*...*/ };
Where derived_class_name is the name of the derived class and base_class_name is the
name of the class on which it is based. The public access specifier may be replaced by any
one of the other access specifiers (protected or private). This access specifier limits the
most accessible level for the members inherited from the base class: The members with a
more accessible level are inherited with this level instead, while the members with an equal
or more restrictive access level keep their restrictive level in the derived class.
1 // derived classes
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
void set_values (int a, int b)
10
{ width=a; height=b;}
11 };
12
13 class Rectangle: public Polygon {
14 public:
15
int area ()
16
{ return width * height; }
17 };
18
19 class Triangle: public Polygon {
20 public:
21
int area ()
22
{ return width * height / 2; }
23 };
24
25 int main () {
26 Rectangle rect;
27 Triangle trgl;
29 trgl.set_values (4,5);
30 cout << rect.area() << '\n';
31 cout << trgl.area() << '\n';
32 return 0;
33 }
20
10
The objects of the classes Rectangle and Triangle each contain members inherited
from Polygon. These are: width,height and set_values.
The protected access specifier used in class Polygon is similar to private. Its only
difference occurs in fact with inheritance: When a class inherits another one, the members of
the derived class can access the protected members inherited from the base class, but not its
private members.
By declaring width and height as protected instead of private, these members are also
accessible from the derived classes Rectangle and Triangle, instead of just from members
of Polygon. If they were public, they could be access just from anywhere.
We can summarize the different access types according to which functions can access them in
the following way:
Access
members of the same class
members of derived class
not members
public
yes
yes
yes
protected
yes
yes
no
private
yes
no
no
Where "not members" represents any access from outside the class, such as from main, from
another class or from a function.
In the example above, the members inherited by Rectangle and Triangle have the same
access permissions as they had in their base class Polygon:
1 Polygon::width
2 Rectangle::width
3
4 Polygon::set_values()
5 Rectangle::set_values()
// protected access
// protected access
// public access
// public access
This is because the inheritance relation has been declared using the public keyword on each
of the derived classes:
class Rectangle: public Polygon { /* ... */ }
This public keyword after the colon (:) denotes the most accessible level the members
inherited from the class that follows it (in this case Polygon) will have from the derived class
(in this case Rectangle). Since public is the most accessible level, by specifying this
keyword the derived class will inherit all the members with the same levels they had in the
base class.
With protected, all public members of the base class are inherited as protected in the
derived class. Conversely, if the most restricting access level is specified (private), all the
base class members are inherited as private.
For example, if daughter were a class derived from mother that we defined as:
class Daughter: protected Mother;
This would set protected as the less restrictive access level for the members
of Daughter that it inherited from mother. That is, all members that
were public in Mother would become protected in Daughter. Of course, this would not
restrictDaughter from declaring its own public members. That less restrictive access level is
only set for the members inherited from Mother.
If no access level is specified for the inheritance, the compiler assumes private for classes
declared with keyword classand public for those declared with struct.
What is inherited from the base class?

In principle, a derived class inherits every member of a base class except:
its constructors and its destructor
its assignment operator members (operator=)
its friends
its private members
Although the constructors and destructors of the base class are not inherited as constructors
and destructors in the derived class, they are still called by the derived class's constructor.
Unless otherwise specified, the constructors of derived classes call the default constructors of
their base classes (i.e., the constructor taking no arguments), which must exist.
Calling a different constructor of a base class is possible, using the same syntax as to
initialize member variables in the initialization list:
derived_constructor_name (parameters) : base_constructor_name (parameters)
{...}
For example:
1 // constructors and derived classes
4
5 class Mother {
6 public:
7
Mother ()
8
{ cout << "Mother: no parameters\n"; }
9
Mother (int a)
10
{ cout << "Mother: int parameter\n"; }
11 };
12
13 class Daughter : public Mother {
14 public:
15
Daughter (int a)
16
{ cout << "Daughter: int parameter\n\n"; }
17 };
18
19 class Son : public Mother {
20 public:
Mother: no parameters
Daughter: int parameter
Mother: int parameter
Son: int parameter
21
Son (int a) : Mother (a)
22
{ cout << "Son: int parameter\n\n"; }
23 };
24
25 int main () {
26 Daughter kelly(0);
27 Son bud(0);
28
29 return 0;
30 }
Notice the difference between which Mother's constructor is called when a

new Daughter object is created and which when it is a Son object. The difference is due to
the different constructor declarations of Daughter and Son:
1 Daughter (int a)
2 Son (int a) : Mother (a)
constructor
// nothing specified: call default constructor

// constructor specified: call this specific
Multiple inheritance
A class may inherit from more than one class by simply specifying more base classes,
separated by commas, in the list of a class's base classes (i.e., after the colon). For example, if
the program had a specific class to print on screen calledOutput, and we wanted our
classes Rectangle and Triangle to also inherit its members in addition to those
of Polygon we could write:
1 class Rectangle: public Polygon, public Output;
2 class Triangle: public Polygon, public Output;
Here is the complete example:

1 // multiple inheritance
20
10
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
Polygon (int a, int b) : width(a), height(b)
10 {}
11 };
12
13 class Output {
14 public:
15
static void print (int i);
16 };
17
18 void Output::print (int i) {
19 cout << i << '\n';
20 }
21
22 class Rectangle: public Polygon, public Output {
23 public:
24
Rectangle (int a, int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
25
int area ()
26
{ return width*height; }
27 };
28
29 class Triangle: public Polygon, public Output {
30 public:
31
Triangle (int a, int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
32
int area ()
33
{ return width*height/2; }
34 };
35
36 int main () {
38 Triangle trgl (4,5);
39 rect.print (rect.area());
40 Triangle::print (trgl.area());
41 return 0;
}
Polymorphism
Before getting any deeper into this chapter, you should have a proper understanding of
pointers and class inheritance. If you are not really sure of the meaning of any of the
following expressions, you should review the indicated sections:
Statement:
int A::b(int c) { }
a->b
class A: public B {};
Explained in:
Classes
Data structures
Friendship and inheritance
Pointers to base class

One of the key features of class inheritance is that a pointer to a derived class is typecompatible with a pointer to its base class. Polymorphism is the art of taking advantage of
this simple but powerful and versatile feature.
The example about the rectangle and triangle classes can be rewritten using pointers taking
this feature into account:
1 // pointers to base class
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
20
10
10
{ width=a; height=b; }
11 };
12
14 public:
15
int area()
16
17 };
18
20 public:
21
int area()
22
23 };
24
25 int main () {
26 Rectangle rect;
27 Triangle trgl;
28 Polygon * ppoly1 = &rect;
29 Polygon * ppoly2 = &trgl;
30 ppoly1->set_values (4,5);
32 cout << rect.area() << '\n';
33 cout << trgl.area() << '\n';
34 return 0;
35 }
Function main declares two pointers to Polygon (named ppoly1 and ppoly2). These are
assigned the addresses of rect andtrgl, respectively, which are objects of
type Rectangle and Triangle. Such assignments are valid, since
both Rectangleand Triangle are classes derived from Polygon.
Dereferencing ppoly1 and ppoly2 (with *ppoly1 and *ppoly2) is valid and allows us to
access the members of their pointed objects. For example, the following two statements
would be equivalent in the previous example:
But because the type of ppoly1 and ppoly2 is pointer to Polygon (and not pointer
to Rectangle nor pointer to Triangle), only the members inherited from Polygon can be
accessed, and not those of the derived classes Rectangle and Triangle. That is why the
program above accesses the area members of both objects using rect and trgl directly,
instead of the pointers; the pointers to the base class cannot access the area members.
Member area could have been accessed with the pointers to Polygon if area were a member
of Polygon instead of a member of its derived classes, but the problem is
that Rectangle and Triangle implement different versions of area, therefore there is not a
single common version that could be implemented in the base class.
Virtual members
A virtual member is a member function that can be redefined in a derived class, while
preserving its calling properties through references. The syntax for a function to become
virtual is to precede its declaration with the virtual keyword:
1 // virtual members
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
10
11
virtual int area ()
12
{ return 0; }
13 };
14
16 public:
17
int area ()
18
{ return width * height; }
19 };
20
22 public:
23
int area ()
24
{ return (width * height / 2); }
25 };
26
27 int main () {
28 Rectangle rect;
29 Triangle trgl;
30 Polygon poly;
33 Polygon * ppoly3 = &poly;
37 cout << ppoly1->area() << '\n';
40 return 0;
41 }
20
10
0
In this example, all three classes (Polygon, Rectangle and Triangle) have the same
members: width, height, and functions set_values and area.
The member function area has been declared as virtual in the base class because it is later
redefined in each of the derived classes. Non-virtual members can also be redefined in
derived classes, but non-virtual members of derived classes cannot be accessed through a
reference of the base class: i.e., if virtual is removed from the declaration of area in the
example above, all three calls to area would return zero, because in all cases, the version of
the base class would have been called instead.
Therefore, essentially, what the virtual keyword does is to allow a member of a derived
class with the same name as one in the base class to be appropriately called from a pointer,
and more precisely when the type of the pointer is a pointer to the base class that is pointing
to an object of the derived class, as in the above example.
A class that declares or inherits a virtual function is called a polymorphic class.
Note that despite of the virtuality of one of its members, Polygon was a regular class, of
which even an object was instantiated (poly), with its own definition of member area that
always returns 0.
Abstract base classes

Abstract base classes are something very similar to the Polygon class in the previous
example. They are classes that can only be used as base classes, and thus are allowed to have
virtual member functions without definition (known as pure virtual functions). The syntax is
to replace their definition by =0 (and equal sign and a zero):
An abstract base Polygon class could look like this:
1 // abstract class CPolygon
2 class Polygon {
3 protected:
4
int width, height;
5 public:
6
7
8
virtual int area () =0;
9 };
Notice that area has no definition; this has been replaced by =0, which makes it a pure
virtual function. Classes that contain at least one pure virtual function are known as abstract
base classes.
Abstract base classes cannot be used to instantiate objects. Therefore, this last abstract base
class version of Polygoncould not be used to declare objects like:
Polygon mypolygon;
// not working if Polygon is abstract base class
But an abstract base class is not totally useless. It can be used to create pointers to it, and
take advantage of all its polymorphic abilities. For example, the following pointer
declarations would be valid:
1 Polygon * ppoly1;
2 Polygon * ppoly2;
And can actually be dereferenced when pointing to objects of derived (non-abstract) classes.
Here is the entire example:
1 // abstract base class
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
10
11
virtual int area (void) =0;
12 };
13
15 public:
16
int area (void)
17
{ return (width * height); }
18 };
19
21 public:
22
int area (void)
23
24 };
25
26 int main () {
27 Rectangle rect;
28 Triangle trgl;
35 return 0;
36 }
20
10
In this example, objects of different but related types are referred to using a unique type of
pointer (Polygon*) and the proper member function is called every time, just because they
are virtual. This can be really useful in some circumstances. For example, it is even possible
for a member of the abstract base class Polygon to use the special pointerthis to access the
proper virtual members, even though Polygon itself has no implementation for this function:
1 // pure virtual members can be called
2 // from the abstract base class
5
6 class Polygon {
7 protected:
8
int width, height;
9 public:
10
11
20
10
12
virtual int area() =0;
13
void printarea()
14
{ cout << this->area() << '\n'; }
15 };
16
18 public:
19
int area (void)
20
{ return (width * height); }
21 };
22
24 public:
25
int area (void)
26
27 };
28
29 int main () {
30 Rectangle rect;
31 Triangle trgl;
36 ppoly1->printarea();
38 return 0;
39 }
Virtual members and abstract classes grant C++ polymorphic characteristics, most useful for
object-oriented projects. Of course, the examples above are very simple use cases, but these
features can be applied to arrays of objects or dynamically allocated objects.
Here is an example that combines some of the features in the latest chapters, such as dynamic
memory, constructor initializers and polymorphism:
1 // dynamic allocation and polymorphism
20
10
4
5 class Polygon {
6 protected:
7
int width, height;
8 public:
9
Polygon (int a, int b) : width(a), height(b)
10 {}
11
virtual int area (void) =0;
12
void printarea()
13
{ cout << this->area() << '\n'; }
14 };
15
17 public:
18
Rectangle(int a,int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
19
int area()
20
21 };
22

24 public:
25
Triangle(int a,int b) : Polygon(a,b) {}
26
int area()
27
28 };
29
30 int main () {
31 Polygon * ppoly1 = new Rectangle (4,5);
32 Polygon * ppoly2 = new Triangle (4,5);
35 delete ppoly1;
36 delete ppoly2;
37 return 0;
}
Notice that the ppoly pointers:

1 Polygon * ppoly1 = new Rectangle (4,5);
2 Polygon * ppoly2 = new Triangle (4,5);
are declared being of type "pointer to Polygon", but the objects allocated have been declared
having the derived class type directly (Rectangle and Triangle).
Type conversions
Implicit conversion
Implicit conversions are automatically performed when a value is copied to a compatible
type. For example:
1 short a=2000;
2 int b;
3 b=a;
Here, the value of a is promoted from short to int without the need of any explicit operator.
This is known as a standard conversion. Standard conversions affect fundamental data types,
and allow the conversions between numerical types
(short to int, int to float, double to int...), to or from bool, and some pointer
conversions.
Converting to int from some smaller integer type, or to double from float is known
as promotion, and is guaranteed to produce the exact same value in the destination type.
Other conversions between arithmetic types may not always be able to represent the same
value exactly:
If a negative integer value is converted to an unsigned type, the resulting value

corresponds to its 2's complement bitwise representation (i.e., -1 becomes the largest
value representable by the type, -2 the second largest, ...).
The conversions from/to bool consider false equivalent to zero (for numeric types)
and to null pointer (for pointer types); true is equivalent to all other values and is
converted to the equivalent of 1.
If the conversion is from a floating-point type to an integer type, the value is truncated
(the decimal part is removed). If the result lies outside the range of representable
values by the type, the conversion causes undefined behavior.
Otherwise, if the conversion is between numeric types of the same kind (integer-tointeger or floating-to-floating), the conversion is valid, but the value
is implementation-specific (and may not be portable).
Some of these conversions may imply a loss of precision, which the compiler can signal with
a warning. This warning can be avoided with an explicit conversion.
For non-fundamental types, arrays and functions implicitly convert to pointers, and pointers
in general allow the following conversions:
Null pointers can be converted to pointers of any type
Pointers to any type can be converted to void pointers.
Pointer upcast: pointers to a derived class can be converted to a pointer of

an accessible and unambiguous base class, without modifying
its const or volatile qualification.
Implicit conversions with classes

In the world of classes, implicit conversions can be controlled by means of three member
functions:
Single-argument constructors: allow implicit conversion from a particular type to

initialize an object.
Assignment operator: allow implicit conversion from a particular type on

assignments.
Type-cast operator: allow implicit conversion to a particular type.
For example:
1 // implicit conversion of classes:

4
5 class A {};
6
7 class B {
8 public:
9 // conversion from A (constructor):
10 B (const A& x) {}
11 // conversion from A (assignment):
12 B& operator= (const A& x) {return *this;}
13 // conversion to A (type-cast operator)
14 operator A() {return A();}
15 };
16
17 int main ()
18 {
19 A foo;
20 B bar = foo;
// calls constructor
21 bar = foo;
// calls assignment
22 foo = bar;
// calls type-cast operator
23 return 0;
24 }
The type-cast operator uses a particular syntax: it uses the operator keyword followed by
the destination type and an empty set of parentheses. Notice that the return type is the
destination type and thus is not specified before theoperator keyword.
Keyword explicit
On a function call, C++ allows one implicit conversion to happen for each argument. This
may be somewhat problematic for classes, because it is not always what is intended. For
example, if we add the following function to the last example:
void fn (B arg) {}
This function takes an argument of type B, but it could as well be called with an object of
type A as argument:
fn (foo);
This may or may not be what was intended. But, in any case, it can be prevented by marking
the affected constructor with the explicit keyword:
1 // explicit:
4
5 class A {};
6
Edit & Run
7 class B {
8 public:
9 explicit B (const A& x) {}
10 B& operator= (const A& x) {return *this;}
11 operator A() {return A();}
12 };
13
14 void fn (B x) {}
15
16 int main ()
17 {
18 A foo;
19 B bar (foo);
20 bar = foo;
21 foo = bar;
22
23 // fn (foo); // not allowed for explicit ctor.
24 fn (bar);
25
26 return 0;
27 }
Additionally, constructors marked with explicit cannot be called with the assignment-like
syntax; In the above example,bar could not have been constructed with:
B bar = foo;
Type-cast member functions (those described in the previous section) can also be specified
as explicit. This prevents implicit conversions in the same way as explicit-specified
constructors do for the destination type.
Type casting
C++ is a strong-typed language. Many conversions, specially those that imply a different
interpretation of the value, require an explicit conversion, known in C++ as type-casting.
There exist two main syntaxes for generic type-casting:functional and c-like:
1 double x = 10.3;
2 int y;
3 y = int (x);
// functional notation
4 y = (int) x;
// c-like cast notation
The functionality of these generic forms of type-casting is enough for most needs with
fundamental data types. However, these operators can be applied indiscriminately on classes
and pointers to classes, which can lead to code that -while being syntactically correct- can
cause runtime errors. For example, the following code compiles without errors:
1 // class type-casting
4
5 class Dummy {
6
double i,j;
7 };
8
9 class Addition {
10
int x,y;
11 public:
12
Addition (int a, int b) { x=a; y=b; }
13
int result() { return x+y;}
14 };
15
16 int main () {
17 Dummy d;
18 Addition * padd;
19 padd = (Addition*) &d;
20 cout << padd->result();
21 return 0;
22 }
The program declares a pointer to Addition, but then it assigns to it a reference to an object
of another unrelated type using explicit type-casting:
padd = (Addition*) &d;
Unrestricted explicit type-casting allows to convert any pointer into any other pointer type,
independently of the types they point to. The subsequent call to member result will produce
either a run-time error or some other unexpected results.
In order to control these types of conversions between classes, we have four specific casting
operators: dynamic_cast,reinterpret_cast, static_cast and const_cast. Their format
is to follow the new type enclosed between angle-brackets (<>) and immediately after, the
expression to be converted between parentheses.
dynamic_cast <new_type> (expression)
reinterpret_cast <new_type> (expression)
static_cast <new_type> (expression)
const_cast <new_type> (expression)
The traditional type-casting equivalents to these expressions would be:

(new_type) expression
new_type (expression)
but each one with its own special characteristics:
dynamic_cast
can only be used with pointers and references to classes (or with void*). Its
purpose is to ensure that the result of the type conversion points to a valid complete object of
the destination pointer type.
dynamic_cast
This naturally includes pointer upcast (converting from pointer-to-derived to pointer-tobase), in the same way as allowed as an implicit conversion.
But dynamic_cast can also downcast (convert from pointer-to-base to pointer-to-derived)
polymorphic classes (those with virtual members) if -and only if- the pointed object is a valid
complete object of the target type. For example:
1 // dynamic_cast
3 #include <exception>
5
6 class Base { virtual void dummy() {} };
7 class Derived: public Base { int a; };
8
9 int main () {
10 try {
11
Base * pba = new Derived;
12
Base * pbb = new Base;
13
Derived * pd;
14
15
pd = dynamic_cast<Derived*>(pba);
16
if (pd==0) cout << "Null pointer on first type17 cast.\n";
18
19
pd = dynamic_cast<Derived*>(pbb);
20
if (pd==0) cout << "Null pointer on second type21 cast.\n";
22
23 } catch (exception& e) {cout << "Exception: " <<
e.what();}
return 0;
}
Null pointer on second type-c
Compatibility note: This type of dynamic_cast requires Run-Time Type Information

(RTTI) to keep track of dynamic types. Some compilers support this feature as an option
which is disabled by default. This needs to be enabled for runtime type checking
using dynamic_cast to work properly with these types.
The code above tries to perform two dynamic casts from pointer objects of
type Base* (pba and pbb) to a pointer object of type Derived*, but only the first one is
successful. Notice their respective initializations:
1 Base * pba = new Derived;
2 Base * pbb = new Base;
Even though both are pointers of type Base*, pba actually points to an object of
type Derived, while pbb points to an object of type Base. Therefore, when their respective
type-casts are performed using dynamic_cast, pba is pointing to a full object of
class Derived, whereas pbb is pointing to an object of class Base, which is an incomplete
object of class Derived.
When dynamic_cast cannot cast a pointer because it is not a complete object of the required
class -as in the second conversion in the previous example- it returns a null pointer to indicate
the failure. If dynamic_cast is used to convert to a reference type and the conversion is not
possible, an exception of type bad_cast is thrown instead.
can also perform the other implicit casts allowed on pointers: casting null
pointers between pointers types (even between unrelated classes), and casting any pointer of
any type to a void* pointer.
dynamic_cast
static_cast
can perform conversions between pointers to related classes, not
only upcasts (from pointer-to-derived to pointer-to-base), but also downcasts (from pointerto-base to pointer-to-derived). No checks are performed during runtime to guarantee that the
object being converted is in fact a full object of the destination type. Therefore, it is up to the
programmer to ensure that the conversion is safe. On the other side, it does not incur the
overhead of the type-safety checks of dynamic_cast.
static_cast
1 class Base {};

2 class Derived: public Base {};
3 Base * a = new Base;
4 Derived * b = static_cast<Derived*>(a);
This would be valid code, although b would point to an incomplete object of the class and
could lead to runtime errors if dereferenced.
Therefore, static_cast is able to perform with pointers to classes not only the conversions
allowed implicitly, but also their opposite conversions.
is also able to perform all conversions allowed implicitly (not only those with
pointers to classes), and is also able to perform the opposite of these. It can:
static_cast
Convert from void* to any pointer type. In this case, it guarantees that if
the void* value was obtained by converting from that same pointer type, the resulting
pointer value is the same.
Convert integers, floating-point values and enum types to enum types.
Additionally, static_cast can also perform the following:
Explicitly call a single-argument constructor or a conversion operator.
Convert to rvalue references.
Convert enum class values into integers or floating-point values.
Convert any type to void, evaluating and discarding the value.
reinterpret_cast
converts any pointer type to any other pointer type, even of unrelated
classes. The operation result is a simple binary copy of the value from one pointer to the
other. All pointer conversions are allowed: neither the content pointed nor the pointer type
itself is checked.
reinterpret_cast
It can also cast pointers to or from integer types. The format in which this integer value
represents a pointer is platform-specific. The only guarantee is that a pointer cast to an integer
type large enough to fully contain it (such as intptr_t), is guaranteed to be able to be cast
back to a valid pointer.
The conversions that can be performed by reinterpret_cast but not by static_cast are
low-level operations based on reinterpreting the binary representations of the types, which on
most cases results in code which is system-specific, and thus non-portable. For example:
1 class
2 class
3A * a
4B * b
A
B
=
=
{ /* ... */ };
{ /* ... */ };
new A;
reinterpret_cast<B*>(a);
This code compiles, although it does not make much sense, since now b points to an object of
a totally unrelated and likely incompatible class. Dereferencing b is unsafe.
const_cast
This type of casting manipulates the constness of the object pointed by a pointer, either to be
set or to be removed. For example, in order to pass a const pointer to a function that expects a
non-const argument:
1 // const_cast
4
5 void print (char * str)
6{
7 cout << str << '\n';
8}
9
10 int main () {
11 const char * c = "sample text";
12 print ( const_cast<char *> (c) );
13 return 0;
14 }
sample text
The example above is guaranteed to work because function print does not write to the
pointed object. Note though, that removing the constness of a pointed object to actually write
to it causes undefined behavior.
typeid
typeid
allows to check the type of an expression:
typeid (expression)
This operator returns a reference to a constant object of type type_info that is defined in the
standard header<typeinfo>. A value returned by typeid can be compared with another
value returned by typeid using operators == and!= or can serve to obtain a null-terminated
character sequence representing the data type or class name by using itsname() member.
1 // typeid
a and b are of different types:
a is: int *
3 #include <typeinfo>
b is: int
5
6 int main () {
7 int * a,b;
8 a=0; b=0;
9 if (typeid(a) != typeid(b))
10 {
11
cout << "a and b are of different types:\n";
12
cout << "a is: " << typeid(a).name() <<
13 '\n';
14
cout << "b is: " << typeid(b).name() <<
15 '\n';
16 }
return 0;
}
When typeid is applied to classes, typeid uses the RTTI to keep track of the type of
dynamic objects. When typeid is applied to an expression whose type is a polymorphic
class, the result is the type of the most derived complete object:
1 // typeid, polymorphic class
3 #include <typeinfo>
6
7 class Base { virtual void f(){} };
8 class Derived : public Base {};
9
10 int main () {
11 try {
12
Base* a = new Base;
13
Base* b = new Derived;
14
cout << "a is: " << typeid(a).name() << '\n';
15
cout << "b is: " << typeid(b).name() << '\n';
16
cout << "*a is: " << typeid(*a).name() << '\n';
a is: class Base *

b is: class Base *
*a is: class Base
*b is: class Derived
17
cout << "*b is: " << typeid(*b).name() << '\n';
18 } catch (exception& e) { cout << "Exception: " << e.what() <<
19 '\n'; }
20 return 0;
}
Note: The string returned by member name of type_info depends on the specific
implementation of your compiler and library. It is not necessarily a simple string with its
typical type name, like in the compiler used to produce this output.
Notice how the type that typeid considers for pointers is the pointer type itself
(both a and b are of type class Base *). However, when typeid is applied to objects
(like *a and *b) typeid yields their dynamic type (i.e. the type of their most derived
complete object).
If the type typeid evaluates is a pointer preceded by the dereference operator (*), and this
pointer has a null value,typeid throws a bad_typeid exception.
Exceptions
Exceptions provide a way to react to exceptional circumstances (like runtime errors) in
programs by transferring control to special functions called handlers.
To catch exceptions, a portion of code is placed under exception inspection. This is done by
enclosing that portion of code in a try-block. When an exceptional circumstance arises within
that block, an exception is thrown that transfers the control to the exception handler. If no
exception is thrown, the code continues normally and all handlers are ignored.
An exception is thrown by using the throw keyword from inside the try block. Exception
handlers are declared with the keyword catch, which must be placed immediately after
the try block:
1 // exceptions
An exception occurred. Exc
Nr. 20
4
5 int main () {
6 try
7 {
8
throw 20;
9 }
10 catch (int e)
11 {
12
cout << "An exception occurred. Exception Nr. " << e <<
13 '\n';
14 }
15 return 0;
}
The code under exception handling is enclosed in a try block. In this example this code
simply throws an exception:
throw 20;
A throw expression accepts one parameter (in this case the integer value 20), which is passed
as an argument to the exception handler.
The exception handler is declared with the catch keyword immediately after the closing
brace of the try block. The syntax for catch is similar to a regular function with one
parameter. The type of this parameter is very important, since the type of the argument passed
by the throw expression is checked against it, and only in the case they match, the exception
is caught by that handler.
Multiple handlers (i.e., catch expressions) can be chained; each one with a different
parameter type. Only the handler whose argument type matches the type of the exception
specified in the throw statement is executed.
If an ellipsis (...) is used as the parameter of catch, that handler will catch any exception no
matter what the type of the exception thrown. This can be used as a default handler that
catches all exceptions not caught by other handlers:
1 try {
2 // code here
3}
4 catch (int param) { cout << "int exception"; }
5 catch (char param) { cout << "char exception"; }
6 catch (...) { cout << "default exception"; }
In this case, the last handler would catch any exception thrown of a type that is
neither int nor char.
After an exception has been handled the program, execution resumes after the trycatch block, not after the throwstatement!.
It is also possible to nest try-catch blocks within more external try blocks. In these cases,
we have the possibility that an internal catch block forwards the exception to its external
level. This is done with the expression throw; with no arguments. For example:
1 try {
2 try {
3
// code here
4 }
5 catch (int n) {
6
throw;
7 }
8}
9 catch (...) {
10 cout << "Exception occurred";

11 }
Exception specification
Older code may contain dynamic exception specifications. They are now deprecated in C++,
but still supported. A dynamic exception specification follows the declaration of a function,
appending a throw specifier to it. For example:
double myfunction (char param) throw (int);
This declares a function called myfunction, which takes one argument of type char and
returns a value of type double. If this function throws an exception of some type other
than int, the function calls std::unexpected instead of looking for a handler or
calling std::terminate.
If this throw specifier is left empty with no type, this means that std::unexpected is called for
any exception. Functions with no throw specifier (regular functions) never
call std::unexpected, but follow the normal path of looking for their exception handler.
1 int myfunction (int param) throw(); // all exceptions call unexpected
2 int myfunction (int param);
// normal exception handling
Standard exceptions
The C++ Standard library provides a base class specifically designed to declare objects to be
thrown as exceptions. It is called std::exception and is defined in the <exception> header. This
class has a virtual member function called what that returns a null-terminated character
sequence (of type char *) and that can be overwritten in derived classes to contain some sort
of description of the exception.
1 // using standard exceptions
5
6 class myexception: public exception
7{
8 virtual const char* what() const throw()
9 {
10
return "My exception happened";
11 }
12 } myex;
13
14 int main () {
15 try
16 {
17
throw myex;
My exception happened.
18
19
20
21
22
23
24 }
}
catch (exception& e)
{
cout << e.what() << '\n';
}
return 0;
We have placed a handler that catches exception objects by reference (notice the
ampersand & after the type), therefore this catches also classes derived from exception, like
our myex object of type myexception.
All exceptions thrown by components of the C++ Standard library throw exceptions derived
from this exception class. These are:
exception
bad_alloc
description
thrown by new on allocation failure
bad_cast
bad_exception
bad_typeid
bad_function_call
bad_weak_ptr
thrown by dynamic_cast when it fails in a dynamic cast

thrown by certain dynamic exception specifiers
thrown by typeid
thrown by empty function objects
thrown by shared_ptr when passed a bad weak_ptr
Also deriving from exception, header <exception> defines two generic exception types that
can be inherited by custom exceptions to report errors:
exception
logic_error
runtime_error
description
error related to the internal logic of the program
error detected during runtime
A typical example where standard exceptions need to be checked for is on memory

allocation:
1 // bad_alloc standard exception
5
6 int main () {
7 try
8 {
9
int* myarray= new int[1000];
10 }
11 catch (exception& e)
12 {
13
cout << "Standard exception: " << e.what() <<
14 endl;
15 }
16 return 0;
}
The exception that may be caught by the exception handler in this example is a bad_alloc.
Because bad_alloc is derived from the standard base class exception, it can be caught
(capturing by reference, captures all related classes).
Preprocessor directives
Preprocessor directives are lines included in the code of programs preceded by a hash sign
(#). These lines are not program statements but directives for the preprocessor. The
preprocessor examines the code before actual compilation of code begins and resolves all
these directives before any code is actually generated by regular statements.
These preprocessor directives extend only across a single line of code. As soon as a newline
character is found, the preprocessor directive is ends. No semicolon (;) is expected at the end
of a preprocessor directive. The only way a preprocessor directive can extend through more
than one line is by preceding the newline character at the end of the line by a backslash (\).
macro definitions (#define, #undef)

To define preprocessor macros we can use #define. Its syntax is:
#define identifier replacement
When the preprocessor encounters this directive, it replaces any occurrence of identifier in
the rest of the code byreplacement. This replacement can be an expression, a statement, a
block or simply anything. The preprocessor does not understand C++ proper, it simply
replaces any occurrence of identifier by replacement.
1 #define TABLE_SIZE 100
2 int table1[TABLE_SIZE];
After the preprocessor has replaced TABLE_SIZE, the code becomes equivalent to:
1 int table1[100];
2 int table2[100];
#define
can work also with parameters to define function macros:
#define getmax(a,b) a>b?a:b
This would replace any occurrence of getmax followed by two arguments by the replacement
expression, but also replacing each argument by its identifier, exactly as you would expect if
it was a function:
1 // function macro
4
5 #define getmax(a,b) ((a)>(b)?(a):(b))
6
7 int main()
8{
9 int x=5, y;
10 y= getmax(x,2);
11 cout << y << endl;
12 cout << getmax(7,x) << endl;
13 return 0;
14 }
Defined macros are not affected by block structure. A macro lasts until it is undefined with
the #undef preprocessor directive:
3 #undef TABLE_SIZE
This would generate the same code as:

1 int table1[100];
2 int table2[200];
Function macro definitions accept two special operators (# and ##) in the replacement
sequence:
If the operator # is used before a parameter is used in the replacement sequence, that
parameter is replaced by a string literal (as if it were enclosed between double quotes)
1 #define str(x) #x
2 cout << str(test);
This would be translated into:

cout << "test";
The operator ## concatenates two arguments leaving no blank spaces between them:
1 #define glue(a,b) a ## b
2 glue(c,out) << "test";
This would also be translated into:

cout << "test";
Because preprocessor replacements happen before any C++ syntax check, macro definitions
can be a tricky feature. But, be careful: code that relies heavily on complicated macros
become less readable, since the syntax expected is on many occasions different from the
normal expressions programmers expect in C++.
Conditional inclusions (#ifdef, #ifndef, #if, #endif, #else and #elif)

These directives allow to include or discard part of the code of a program if a certain
condition is met.
allows a section of a program to be compiled only if the macro that is specified as the
parameter has been defined, no matter which its value is. For example:
#ifdef
1 #ifdef TABLE_SIZE
2 int table[TABLE_SIZE];
3 #endif
In this case, the line of code int table[TABLE_SIZE]; is only compiled if TABLE_SIZE was
previously defined with #define, independently of its value. If it was not defined, that line
will not be included in the program compilation.
serves for the exact opposite: the code between #ifndef and #endif directives is
only compiled if the specified identifier has not been previously defined. For example:
#ifndef
1 #ifndef TABLE_SIZE
3 #endif
In this case, if when arriving at this piece of code, the TABLE_SIZE macro has not been
defined yet, it would be defined to a value of 100. If it already existed it would keep its
previous value since the #define directive would not be executed.
The #if, #else and #elif (i.e., "else if") directives serve to specify some condition to be
met in order for the portion of code they surround to be compiled. The condition that
follows #if or #elif can only evaluate constant expressions, including macro expressions.
For example:
1 #if TABLE_SIZE>200
2 #undef TABLE_SIZE
4
5 #elif TABLE_SIZE<50
6 #undef TABLE_SIZE
8
9 #else
10 #undef TABLE_SIZE
12 #endif
13
Notice how the entire structure of #if, #elif and #else chained directives ends
with #endif.
The behavior of #ifdef and #ifndef can also be achieved by using the special
operators defined and !defined respectively in any #if or #elif directive:
1 #if defined ARRAY_SIZE
2 #define TABLE_SIZE ARRAY_SIZE
3 #elif !defined BUFFER_SIZE
5 #else
6 #define TABLE_SIZE BUFFER_SIZE
7 #endif
Line control (#line)

When we compile a program and some error happens during the compiling process, the
compiler shows an error message with references to the name of the file where the error
happened and a line number, so it is easier to find the code generating the error.
The #line directive allows us to control both things, the line numbers within the code files as
well as the file name that we want that appears when an error takes place. Its format is:
#line number "filename"
Where number is the new line number that will be assigned to the next code line. The line
numbers of successive lines will be increased one by one from this point on.
is an optional parameter that allows to redefine the file name that will be shown.
For example:
"filename"
1 #line 20 "assigning variable"

2 int a?;
This code will generate an error that will be shown as error in file "assigning variable",
line 20.
Error directive (#error)
This directive aborts the compilation process when it is found, generating a compilation error
that can be specified as its parameter:
1 #ifndef __cplusplus
2 #error A C++ compiler is required!
3 #endif
This example aborts the compilation process if the macro name __cplusplus is not defined
(this macro name is defined by default in all C++ compilers).
Source file inclusion (#include)

This directive has been used assiduously in other sections of this tutorial. When the
preprocessor finds an #includedirective it replaces it by the entire content of the specified
header or file. There are two ways to use #include:
1 #include <header>
2 #include "file"
In the first case, a header is specified between angle-brackets <>. This is used to include
headers provided by the implementation, such as the headers that compose the standard
library (iostream, string,...). Whether the headers are actually files or exist in some other
form is implementation-defined, but in any case they shall be properly included with this
directive.
The syntax used in the second #include uses quotes, and includes a file. The file is searched
for in an implementation-defined manner, which generally includes the current path. In the
case that the file is not found, the compiler interprets the directive as a header inclusion, just
as if the quotes ("") were replaced by angle-brackets (<>).
Pragma directive (#pragma)

This directive is used to specify diverse options to the compiler. These options are specific for
the platform and the compiler you use. Consult the manual or the reference of your compiler
for more information on the possible parameters that you can define with #pragma.
If the compiler does not support a specific argument for #pragma, it is ignored - no syntax
error is generated.
Predefined macro names

The following macro names are always defined (they all begin and end with two underscore
characters, _):
macro
__LINE__
__FILE__
__DATE__
__TIME__
value
Integer value representing the current line in the source code file being
compiled.
A string literal containing the presumed name of the source file being
compiled.
A string literal in the form "Mmm dd yyyy" containing the date in which
the compilation process began.
A string literal in the form "hh:mm:ss" containing the time at which the
compilation process began.
An integer value. All C++ compilers have this constant defined to some
value. Its value depends on the version of the standard supported by
the compiler:
199711L: ISO C++ 1998/2003
201103L: ISO C++ 2011
__cplusplus
Non conforming compilers define this constant as some value at most

five digits long. Note that many compilers are not fully conforming and
thus will have this constant defined as neither of the values above.
1 if the implementation is a hosted implementation (with all standard
__STD_HOSTED_
headers available)
_
0 otherwise.
The following macros are optionally defined, generally depending on whether a feature is
available:
macro
__STDC__
__STDC_VERSION__
value
In C: if defined to 1, the implementation conforms
to the C standard.
In C++: Implementation defined.
In C:
199401L: ISO C 1990, Ammendment 1
199901L: ISO C 1999
201112L: ISO C 2011
In C++: Implementation defined.

__STDC_MB_MIGHT_NEQ_WC__
1 if multibyte encoding might give a character a

different value in character literals
__STDC_ISO_10646__
A value in the form yyyymmL, specifying the date

of the Unicode standard followed by the encoding
of wchar_t characters
__STDCPP_STRICT_POINTER_SAFETY_ 1 if the implementation has strict pointer

_
safety (see get_pointer_safety)
__STDCPP_THREADS__
1 if the program can have more than one thread
Particular implementations may define additional constants.
For example:
1 // standard macro names
This is the line number 7 of file
/home/jay/stdmacronames.cpp.
Its compilation began Nov 1 2005 at
4
10:12:29.
5 int main()
The compiler gives a __cplusplus value
6{
of 1
7 cout << "This is the line number
8 " << __LINE__;
9 cout << " of file " << __FILE__
1 << ".\n";
0 cout << "Its compilation began "
1 << __DATE__;
1 cout << " at " << __TIME__ <<
1 ".\n";
2 cout << "The compiler gives a
1 __cplusplus value of " <<
3 __cplusplus;
return 0;
}
Input/output with files

C++ provides the following classes to perform output and input of characters
to/from files:
ofstream: Stream class to write on files
ifstream: Stream class to read from files
fstream: Stream class to both read and write from/to files.
These classes are derived directly or indirectly from the

classes istream and ostream. We have already used objects whose types were
these classes: cin is an object of class istream and cout is an object of
class ostream. Therefore, we have already been using classes that are related to
our file streams. And in fact, we can use our file streams the same way we are
already used to use cin and cout, with the only difference that we have to
associate these streams with physical files. Let's see an example:
1 // basic file operations
3 #include <fstream>
5
6 int main () {
7 ofstream myfile;
8 myfile.open ("example.txt");
9 myfile << "Writing this to a file.\n";
[file example.txt]
Writing this to a file.
10 myfile.close();
11 return 0;
12 }
This code creates a file called example.txt and inserts a sentence into it in the
same way we are used to do with cout, but using the file stream myfile instead.
But let's go step by step:
Open a file
The first operation generally performed on an object of one of these classes is to
associate it to a real file. This procedure is known as to open a file. An open file is
represented within a program by a stream (i.e., an object of one of these classes;
in the previous example, this was myfile) and any input or output operation
performed on this stream object will be applied to the physical file associated to
it.
In order to open a file with a stream object we use its member function open:
open (filename, mode);
Where filename is a string representing the name of the file to be opened,

and mode is an optional parameter with a combination of the following flags:
ios::in
Open for input operations.
ios::out
Open for output operations.
ios::binar
Open in binary mode.
y
ios::ate
Set the initial position at the end of the file.

If this flag is not set, the initial position is the beginning of the file.
ios::app
All output operations are performed at the end of the file, appending the
content to the current content of the file.
ios::trunc
If the file is opened for output operations and it already existed, its
previous content is deleted and replaced by the new one.
All these flags can be combined using the bitwise operator OR ( |). For example, if
we want to open the file example.bin in binary mode to add data we could do it
by the following call to member function open:
1 ofstream myfile;
2 myfile.open ("example.bin", ios::out | ios::app | ios::binary);
Each of the open member functions of classes ofstream, ifstream and fstream has
a default mode that is used if the file is opened without a second argument:
class
default mode parameter
ofstream
ios::out
ifstream
ios::in
fstream
ios::in | ios::out
For ifstream and ofstream classes, ios::in and ios::out are automatically and
respectively assumed, even if a mode that does not include them is passed as
second argument to the open member function (the flags are combined).
For fstream, the default value is only applied if the function is called without
specifying any value for the mode parameter. If the function is called with any
value in that parameter the default mode is overridden, not combined.
File streams opened in binary mode perform input and output operations
independently of any format considerations. Non-binary files are known as text
files, and some translations may occur due to formatting of some special
characters (like newline and carriage return characters).
Since the first task that is performed on a file stream is generally to open a file,
these three classes include a constructor that automatically calls
the open member function and has the exact same parameters as this member.
Therefore, we could also have declared the previous myfile object and conduct
the same opening operation in our previous example by writing:
ofstream myfile ("example.bin", ios::out | ios::app | ios::binary);
Combining object construction and stream opening in a single statement. Both

forms to open a file are valid and equivalent.
To check if a file stream was successful opening a file, you can do it by calling to
member is_open. This member function returns a bool value of true in the case
that indeed the stream object is associated with an open file, or false otherwise:
if (myfile.is_open()) { /* ok, proceed with output */ }
Closing a file
When we are finished with our input and output operations on a file we shall
close it so that the operating system is notified and its resources become
available again. For that, we call the stream's member function close. This
member function takes flushes the associated buffers and closes the file:
myfile.close();
Once this member function is called, the stream object can be re-used to open
another file, and the file is available again to be opened by other processes.
In case that an object is destroyed while still associated with an open file, the
destructor automatically calls the member function close.
Text files
Text file streams are those where the ios::binary flag is not included in their
opening mode. These files are designed to store text and thus all values that are
input or output from/to them can suffer some formatting transformations, which
do not necessarily correspond to their literal binary value.
Writing operations on text files are performed in the same way we operated
with cout:
1 // writing on a text file
5
6 int main () {
7 ofstream myfile ("example.txt");
8 if (myfile.is_open())
9 {
10
myfile << "This is a line.\n";
11
myfile << "This is another line.\n";
12
myfile.close();
13 }
14 else cout << "Unable to open file";
15 return 0;
16 }
[file example.txt]
This is a line.
This is another line.
Reading from a file can also be performed in the same way that we did with cin:
1 // reading a text file
4 #include <string>
This is a line.
This is another line.

6
7 int main () {
8 string line;
9 ifstream myfile ("example.txt");
10 if (myfile.is_open())
11 {
12
while ( getline (myfile,line) )
13
{
14
cout << line << '\n';
15
}
16
myfile.close();
17 }
18
19 else cout << "Unable to open file";
20
21 return 0;
22 }
This last example reads a text file and prints out its content on the screen. We
have created a while loop that reads the file line by line, using getline. The
value returned by getline is a reference to the stream object itself, which when
evaluated as a boolean expression (as in this while-loop) is true if the stream is
ready for more operations, and false if either the end of the file has been
reached or if some other error occurred.
Checking state flags

The following member functions exist to check for specific states of a stream (all
of them return a bool value):
bad()
Returns true if a reading or writing operation fails. For example, in the

case that we try to write to a file that is not open for writing or if the
device where we try to write has no space left.
fail()
Returns true in the same cases as bad(), but also in the case that a format
error happens, like when an alphabetical character is extracted when we
are trying to read an integer number.
eof()
Returns true if a file open for reading has reached the end.
good()
It is the most generic state flag: it returns false in the same cases in
which calling any of the previous functions would return true. Note
that good and bad are not exact opposites (good checks more state flags at
once).
The member function clear() can be used to reset the state flags.
get and put stream positioning

All i/o streams objects keep internally -at least- one internal position:
ifstream, like istream, keeps an internal get position with the location of the
element to be read in the next input operation.

ofstream, like ostream, keeps an internal put position with the location where the
next element has to be written.

Finally, fstream, keeps both, the get and the put position, like iostream.
These internal stream positions point to the locations within the stream where
the next reading or writing operation is performed. These positions can be
observed and modified using the following member functions:
tellg() and tellp()
These two member functions with no parameters return a value of the member
type streampos, which is a type representing the current get position (in the case
of tellg) or the put position (in the case of tellp).
seekg() and seekp()
These functions allow to change the location of the get and put positions. Both
functions are overloaded with two different prototypes. The first form is:
seekg ( position );
seekp ( position );
Using this prototype, the stream pointer is changed to the absolute

position position (counting from the beginning of the file). The type for this
parameter is streampos, which is the same type as returned by
functions tellg and tellp.
The other form for these functions is:
seekg ( offset, direction );
seekp ( offset, direction );
Using this prototype, the get or put position is set to an offset value relative to
some specific point determined by the parameter direction. offset is of
type streamoff. And direction is of type seekdir, which is an enumerated

type that determines the point from where offset is counted from, and that can
take any of the following values:
ios::beg
offset counted from the beginning of the stream
ios::cur
offset counted from the current position
ios::end
offset counted from the end of the stream
The following example uses the member functions we have just seen to obtain
the size of a file:
1 // obtaining file size
5
6 int main () {
7 streampos begin,end;
8 ifstream myfile ("example.bin", ios::binary);
9 begin = myfile.tellg();
10 myfile.seekg (0, ios::end);
11 end = myfile.tellg();
12 myfile.close();
13 cout << "size is: " << (end-begin) << "
14 bytes.\n";
15 return 0;
}
size is: 40 bytes.
Notice the type we have used for variables begin and end:
streampos size;
streampos is a specific type used for buffer and file positioning and is the type
returned by file.tellg(). Values of this type can safely be subtracted from other
values of the same type, and can also be converted to an integer type large
enough to contain the size of the file.
These stream positioning functions use two particular
types: streampos and streamoff. These types are also defined as member types
of the stream class:
Type
Member type
Description
Defined as fpos<mbstate_t>.
streampo ios::pos_typ
It can be converted to/from streamoff and can be added or
s
e
subtracted values of these types.
streamof ios::off_typ It is an alias of one of the fundamental integral types (such

f
e
as int or long long).
Each of the member types above is an alias of its non-member equivalent (they
are the exact same type). It does not matter which one is used. The member
types are more generic, because they are the same on all stream objects (even
on streams using exotic types of characters), but the non-member types are
widely used in existing code for historical reasons.
Binary files
For binary files, reading and writing data with the extraction and insertion
operators (<< and >>) and functions likegetline is not efficient, since we do not
need to format any data and data is likely not formatted in lines.
File streams include two member functions specifically designed to read and
write binary data sequentially: write andread. The first one (write) is a member
function of ostream (inherited by ofstream). And read is a member function
ofistream (inherited by ifstream). Objects of class fstream have both. Their
prototypes are:
write ( memory_block, size );
read ( memory_block, size );
Where memory_block is of type char* (pointer to char), and represents the address
of an array of bytes where the read data elements are stored or from where the
data elements to be written are taken. The size parameter is an integer value
that specifies the number of characters to be read or written from/to the memory
block.
1 // reading an entire binary file
5
6 int main () {
7 streampos size;
8 char * memblock;
9
10 ifstream file ("example.bin", ios::in|ios::binary|
11 ios::ate);
12 if (file.is_open())
13 {
14
size = file.tellg();
15
memblock = new char [size];
16
file.seekg (0, ios::beg);
17
file.read (memblock, size);
18
file.close();
19
20
cout << "the entire file content is in memory";
the entire file content is i
21
22
23
24
25
delete[] memblock;
}
else cout << "Unable to open file";
return 0;
In this example, the entire file is read and stored in a memory block. Let's
examine how this is done:
First, the file is open with the ios::ate flag, which means that the get pointer will
be positioned at the end of the file. This way, when we call to member tellg(),
we will directly obtain the size of the file.
Once we have obtained the size of the file, we request the allocation of a
memory block large enough to hold the entire file:
memblock = new char[size];
Right after that, we proceed to set the get position at the beginning of the file
(remember that we opened the file with this pointer at the end), then we read
the entire file, and finally close it:
1 file.seekg (0, ios::beg);
2 file.read (memblock, size);
3 file.close();
At this point we could operate with the data obtained from the file. But our
program simply announces that the content of the file is in memory and then
finishes.
Buffers and Synchronization

When we operate with file streams, these are associated to an internal buffer
object of type streambuf. This buffer object may represent a memory block that
acts as an intermediary between the stream and the physical file. For example,
with an ofstream, each time the member function put (which writes a single
character) is called, the character may be inserted in this intermediate buffer
instead of being written directly to the physical file with which the stream is
associated.
The operating system may also define other layers of buffering for reading and
writing to files.
When the buffer is flushed, all the data contained in it is written to the physical
medium (if it is an output stream). This process is called synchronization and
takes place under any of the following circumstances:
When the file is closed: before closing a file, all buffers that have not
yet been flushed are synchronized and all pending data is written or read
to the physical medium.
When the buffer is full: Buffers have a certain size. When the buffer is
full it is automatically synchronized.
Explicitly, with manipulators: When certain manipulators are used on

streams, an explicit synchronization takes place. These manipulators
are: flush and endl.
Explicitly, with member function sync(): Calling the stream's member

function sync() causes an immediate synchronization. This function
returns an int value equal to -1 if the stream has no associated buffer or
in case of failure. Otherwise (if the stream buffer was successfully
synchronized) it returns 0.

C

Hochgeladen von

Dokumentinformationen

Originaltitel

Copyright

Verfügbare Formate

Dieses Dokument teilen

Dokument teilen oder einbetten

Freigabeoptionen

Stufen Sie dieses Dokument als nützlich ein?

Sind diese Inhalte unangemessen?

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

C

Hochgeladen von

Copyright:

Verfügbare Formate

Compilers

7 cout << sum << endl;

clang++ -std=c++11 -stdlib=libc++ example.cpp -o

Edit & Run

Edit & Run

We could have written:

Edit & Run

Hello World! I'm a C++

Edit & Run

Edit & Run

C++ supports two ways of commenting code:

Hello World! I'm a C+ Edit &

Using namespace std

Hello World! I'm a C++ program

Edit & Run

Variables and types

conduct sophisticated mathematical operations with them.

Specific compilers may also have additional specific reserved keywords.

Fundamental data types

occupy the same amount of memory.

Here is the complete list of fundamental types in C++:

Notes on size / precision

Not smaller than char. At least 16 bits.

Not smaller than char16_t. At least 32

Same size as char. At least 8 bits.

signed short int

Not smaller than char. At least 16 bits.

Not smaller than short. At least 16 bits.

signed long int

Not smaller than int. At least 32 bits.

signed long long int

Not smaller than long. At least 64 bits.

unsigned short int

Precision not less than float

Precision not less than double

unsigned long int

(same size as their signed counterparts)

* The names of certain integer types can be abbreviated without

Unique representable values

aliases in header <cstdint>.

Edit & Run

A second method, known as constructor initialization (introduced by the C++ language),

6 Edit & Run

Type deduction: auto and decltype

// the same as: int bar = foo;

// the same as: int bar;

Here, bar is declared as having the same type as foo.

Edit & Run

This is the initial string Edit &

The 5 in this piece of code was a literal constant.

Floating Point Numerals

Any of the letters that can be part of a floating-point numerical constant ( e, f, l)

Character and string literals

Character and string literals are enclosed in quotes:

Here, x alone would refer to an identifier, such as the name of a variable or a

form feed (page feed)

single quote (')

double quote (")

question mark (?)

Internally, computers represent characters as numerical codes: most typically,

" string "

The above is a string literal equivalent to:

The string literal is encoded in the executable using UTF-8