Coronado Enterprises C TUTOR

Getting Started with the C++ tutorial The first thing you should do is to backup the distribution diskettes and store the distribution diskettes away in a safe place. Use only the copy for all operations. Getting started with the TEXT diskette Before you can begin studying C++, you must print out a copy of the tutorial text. The file named PRINTEXT.BAT is designed to help you do this. Simply type the name PRINTEXT at the DOS prompt and all of the tutorial text will be printed for you. This batch file uses the executable file named PRNTTEXT.EXE to print the files. This executable file prints the files with 8 spaces at the beginning of eac...

This documentation and the accompanying software, including all of the example C++ programs and text files, are protected under United States copyright law to protect them from unauthorized commercialization. This version of the tutorial is distributed under the shareware concept, which means you are not required to pay for it. You are permitted to copy the disks, and pass the copies on to a friend, provided that you do not modify any files or omit any files from the complete package. You are, in fact, encouraged to pass on complete copies to friends. You are permitted to charge a small fee to cover the costs of duplication, but you are n...

THE ORIGIN OF C++ The C programming language was developed at AT&T for the purpose of writing the operating system for the PDP-11 series of computers which ultimately became the unix operating system. C was developed with the primary goal of operating efficiency. Bjarne Stroustrup, also of AT&T, developed C++ in order to add object oriented constructs to the C language. Because object oriented technology was new at the time and all existing implementations of object oriented languages were very slow and inefficient, the primary goal of C++ was to maintain the efficiency of C. C++ can be viewed as a procedural language with some a...

Chapter 1: SIMPLE THINGS As we begin the study of C++ and object oriented programming, a few comments are in order to help you get started. Since the field of object oriented programming is probably new to you, you will find that there is a significant amount of new terminology for you to grasp. This is true of any new endeavor and you should be warned not to be intimidated by all of the new concepts. We will add a few new topics in each chapter and you will slowly grasp the entire language. Chapters one through four of this tutorial will concentrate on the non object oriented programming additions to C++. We will not begin the discussio...

Chapter 2: COMPOUND TYPES: ENUMERATED TYPES Examine the file named ENUM.CPP for an example that uses an enumerated type variable. The enumerated type is used in C++ in exactly the same way it was used in ANSI-C with one small exception, the keyword enum is not required to be used again when defining a variable of that type, but it can be used if desired. It may be clearer to you to use the keyword when defining a variable in the same manner that it is required to be used in C, and you may choose to do so. The example program uses the keyword enum in line 9, but omits it in line 8 to illustrate to you that it is indeed optional. The remai...

Chapter 3: POINTERS Because pointers are so important in C and C++, this chapter will review some of the more important topics concerning pointers. Even if you are extremely conversant in the use of pointers, you should not completely ignore this chapter because some new material unique to C++ is presented here. POINTER REVIEW Examine the program named POINTERS.CPP for a simple example of the use of pointers. This is a pointer review and if you are comfortable with the use of pointers, you can skip this example program completely. A pointer in either ANSI-C or C++ is declared with an asterisk preceding the variable name. The pointer is t...

Chapter 4: FUNCTIONS This chapter discusses enhancements in the capabilities of functions that have been made to C++. These changes make programming more convenient and permit the compiler to do further checking for errors. A fair amount of time is also spent in this chapter teaching the modern form of function definition and prototyping. Prototyping allows the compiler to do additional type checking for your function calls which can detect some programming errors. The first two example programs in this chapter are designed to teach prototyping and what it will do for you. Prototyping is a relatively new addition to C, so even some exper...

Chapter 5: ENCAPSULATION As mentioned in Chapter 1, object oriented programming will seem very unnatural to a programmer with a lot of procedural programming experience. This chapter is the beginning of the definition of object oriented programming, and we will study the topic of encapsulation which is a "divide and conquer" technique. As we stated earlier, there are a lot of new terms used with object oriented programming. Don't be intimidated by the new terminology, we will study the terms one at a time in a meaningful order. Encapsulation is the process of forming objects which we will discuss throughout this chapter. An encapsula...

Chapter 6: MORE ENCAPSULATION The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate how to use some of the traditional aspects of C or C++ with classes and objects. Pointers to an object as well as pointers within an object will be illustrated. Arrays embedded within an object, and an array of objects will be illustrated. Since objects are simply another C++ data construct, all of these things are possible and can be used if needed. In order to have a systematic study, we will use the program named BOXES1.CPP from the last chapter as a starting point and we will add a few new constructs to it for each example program. You will recall that it was ...

Chapter 7: INHERITANCE One reason to use inheritance is that it allows you to reuse code from a previous project but gives you the flexibility to slightly modify it if the old code doesn't do exactly what you need for the new project. It doesn't make sense to start every new project from scratch since some code will certainly be repeated in several programs and you should strive to build on what you did previously. Moreover, it is easy to make an error if we try to modify the original class, but we are less likely to make an error if we leave the original alone and only add to it. Another reason for using inheritance is if the pr...