The Annotated C++ Reference Manual - Softcover

The C++ reference manual alone provides a complete definition of C++, but the terse reference manual style leaves many reasonable questions unanswered. Discussions of what is not in the language, why certain features are defined as they are, and how one might implement some particular feature have no place in a reference manual but are nevertheless of interest to most users. Such discussions are presented as annotations and in the commentary sections.

The commentary also helps the reader appreciate the relationships among different parts of the language and emphasizes points and implications that might have been overlooked in the reference manual itself. Examples and comparisons with C also make this book more approachable than the bare reference manual.

This book does not provide information about standard libraries beyond discussion of the library functions providing the most basic run-time support nor does it discuss C++ programming styles or techniques. Furthermore, this book does not attempt to teach C++ programming; it explains what the language is--not how to use it.

The index and the cross references embedded in the commentary and in the reference manual itself are important and integral parts of the book.

We hope that this reference manual will provide a firm base for further evolution of C++. It has been chosen by ANSI to serve as a starting point for the formal standardization of C++.

Margaret A. Ellis
Bjarne Stroustrup
Murray Hill, New Jersey 0201514591P04062001

About Margaret A. Ellis has worked for AT&T Bell Laboratories, UNIX System Laboratories, and Novell in compiler development. Ellis received a masters of science degree in computer science from the University of California. She is the coauthor of The Annotated C++ Reference Manual.

Bjarne Stroustrup is the designer and original implementer of C++, the author of The C++ Programming Language, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual, and The Design and Evolution of C++, and the consulting editor of Addison-Wesley's C++ In-Depth Series. Having previously worked at Bell Labs and AT&T Labs-Research, he currently is the College of Engineering Chair in Computer Science Professor at Texas A&M University. The recipient of numerous honors, including the Dr. Dobb's Excellence in Programming Award (2008), Dr. Stroustrup is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, an AT&T Fellow, an AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow, an IEEE Fellow, and an ACM Fellow. His research interests include distributed systems, simulation, design, programming techniques, software development tools, and programming languages, and he remains actively involved in the ANSI/ISO standardization of C++. Dr. Stroustrup holds an advanced degree from the University of Aarhus in his native Denmark and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Cambridge University, England.