C++ Workshop - Getting Started with C++ (Ch. 1 & 2)

Jeromy Walsh · 2008-05-18T16:41:20

Welcome to the GDNet C++ Workshop – Ch. 1 & 2For a complete introduction to this workshop, please look here.Workshop Overview This workshop is designed to aid people in their journey to learn beginning C++. This workshop is targeted at highly motivated individuals who are interested in learning C++ or who have attempted to learn C++ in the past, but found that without sufficient support and mentoring they were unable to connect all the pieces of this highly complex but powerful programming language. This is a 'guided' self-teaching C++ workshop. Each student is responsible for taking the time to read the material and learn the information. The community and tutors that arise out of this workshop are here for making the learning process run more smoothly, but are not obligated to baby-sit a person's progress. Because everyone will be working from the same textbook (Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days 5th Ed.), students may find it easier to get answers to the specific questions they might have. There is no minimum age requirement, and there is no previous programming experience required. Additionally, this workshop does not attempt to defend C++ as a language, nor does it attempt to demonstrate that C++ is either more or less useful then other programming languages for any particular purpose. People who intend to start a discussion about the differences between C++ and ANY other languages (except as are relevant to a particular discussion), are encouraged to do so elsewhere. This workshop is for educational, not philosophical discussions. Quizzes & Exercises Each chapter will have quizzes and exercises. Please try and answer them by yourself. If you try with reasonable effort but are unable to answer the questions or complete the exercises, feel free to post a clarification question here on the thread. Tutors, myself, or others will do the best we can to point you in the right direction for finding the answer. Chapter 1 – Getting Started, Chapter 2 – The Anatomy of a C++ ProgramIntroduction Greetings! Most weeks will be 7 days, beginning on Monday and ending on Sunday, however as this week starts on Thursday, and is the first “week” in the class, we will extend it to a full 10 days to get on a better schedule and give people a chance to obtain their textbooks in the mail. Additionally, as the topics are relatively straight forward, requiring little programming, etc…Week 1 will be a combination of the first 2 chapters. Chapter 1 is about 16 pages and chapter 2 is an additional 14 pages. Participants have 10 days ( ending Sunday, June 10th ) to read the first two chapters, at which point we will move on to the next chapter. Participants are welcome to post their questions for these chapters within this thread and myself, the tutors, and other participants will do the best we can to answer your questions. As the thread is likely to grow to a hundred or more posts, the C++ workshop threads will be closely moderated. Discussions which become narratives, flame-wars, or philosophical will either be removed or moved to another forum, unless entirely relevant to the current chapters. If you have trouble installing your compiler or getting “Hello World” to build, please ask for help. You will not be able to move forward with the workshop until you’ve done those two tasks successfully. Good Luck! Finally, feel free to post quiz-like questions after about 5 days. This will give people an opportunity to test their knowledge and understanding after they’ve had a chance to absorb the information. For questions which require further research then what is in the book, mark the question with an [Extra Credit] tag. Topical Outline of the Reading (Not literal due to copyrights) A History of C++ Which language should be learned first C or C++? How does C++ compare to Java and C#? An introduction to Managed C++ The ANSI Standard Getting in the right mindset to program How an .exe gets created Building your first program. – “Hello World” An introduction to compiler errors A review of Hello World An introduction to “Console Out” An introduction to the Standard Namespace Commenting your code An introduction to functions The difference between Methods and Functions Additional Resources None... Creating and Building a Project w/ VC++ .NET 2005It has come to my attention that the instructions for creating a project/file in the book on pages 19-20 are for Visual C++ 6. Visual C++ .NET 2005 is actually version 8. The correct approach for .NET 2005 is: Step 1: Create an empty project File->New->Project Select 'Win32' from Project types Select 'Win32 Console Application' from the Templates Type the name of the project and the location in the edit box near the bottom. Click OK When the dialog box appears click on "Application Settings" on the left Click "Empty Project" under Additional options. Click Finish Step 2: Add files to your project Right click on your project in the Solution Explorer Add->New Item Click Code in the Categories List Select either C++ File or Header File as appropriate to the task Type the name of the file in the edit box near the bottom. Click Add Building your executable For solutions which only have a single project, Build Solution will do the same as "Build <projName>". Once you have solutions which are containers for multiple projects, you will need to choose either to build individual projects, or the whole solution. I believe all of the tasks we will attempt in this workshop will require only a single project. As such, "Build Solution" should work just fine. Week 1 Errata Chapter 1, Exercise 1 says "...try to guess what it does without running it." If you DO put it into a compiler it will give you a compile error as the listing is not correct. The author meant: #include <iostream> int main() { int x = 5; int y = 7; std::cout << std::endl; std::cout << x + y << " " << x * y; std::cout << std::endl; return 0; } Note that 'endl' is also part of the Standard Namespace, and thus requires std:: at the beginning. [Edited by - jwalsh on May 30, 2007 5:25:07 PM]

CPP Workshop Workshops

Started by JWalsh June 01, 2006 11:40 AM

182 comments, last by Dbproguy 16 years, 9 months ago

ChaosUK

122

September 14, 2006 01:32 PM

Got the book today, time to get busy :)

Quick question about namespaces , what happens when there are 2 namespaces with the same name, compile error im guessing ?

Alpha_ProgDes

6,963

September 14, 2006 03:26 PM

yep. unless those two namespaces are in enclosed in two other namespaces with different names.

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Deyja

920

September 14, 2006 04:32 PM

No.

The two namespaces 'merge'. You can reopen a namespace.

namespace Foo     //open namespace Foo{   void a_function();}   //close namespace Foonamespace Foo     //open namespace Foo again. No problem!{   void another_function();  //now namespace Foo contains TWO functions.}   //close namespace Foonamespace Foo     //still fine{   void a_function(); //Uhoh! Foo::a_function was already declared!}

You can also open the same namespace in different headers. It all gets combined into the same namespace. This is why the standard library can all be in namespace std, but still be spread over many files.

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Nuc12

122

November 11, 2006 03:22 PM

I recently stumbled on this workshop and think it is a great way to get back into computer programming. Is this still being actively moderated? If so, I plan on catching up fast.

Just got a copy of the book and have a question about Exercise 3 in getting started. The code looks perfect to me and does not give me any errors when compiling but question 4 says to fix the error. Is this a mistake or am I missing something?

Also, on page 92:

if( (x==5) || (++y == 3) )

The book says "If x is not equal to 5, then (++y == 3) is not evaluated...

Shouldn't this read "If x is equal to 5..." ?

[Edited by - Nuc12 on November 11, 2006 4:22:24 PM]

nobodynews

3,128

November 11, 2006 06:45 PM

I can't help with the first question because I do not have the book and therefore don't have a clue what Excersize 3 looks like. I do however understand your second question.

Short answer: the second bit of code in the if statement does Not run when x==5. This is known as 'short-circuit evaluation'

http://www.codepedia.com/wiki/printer.aspx?WikiID=1&p=ShortCircuitEval

Basically, because the if statement is guaranteed to be true why waste processor cycles to evaluate the rest of the statement? You shouldn't be relying on 'side effects' in code like that anyway. 'Side effects?' you say.

http://www.informit.com/guides/content.asp?g=cplusplus&seqNum=187&rl=1

Hope this helps.

C++: A Dialog | C++0x Features: Part1 (lambdas, auto, static_assert) , Part 2 (rvalue references) , Part 3 (decltype) | Write Games | Fix Your Timestep!

Nuc12

122

November 12, 2006 11:08 AM

THanks for the reply

But since this is an || (or) wouldn't it evaluate the second argument if the first one was false?

popcorn

151

November 12, 2006 07:51 PM

Quote:
Original post by Nuc12
THanks for the reply

But since this is an || (or) wouldn't it evaluate the second argument if the first one was false?

I believe you are correct, for things like this the best thing to do would be to write small programs to test whether you are right or wrong. Something like the following should suffice:

int x = 4;int y = 2;if((x == 5) || (++y == 3))  cout << "(++y == 3) evaluated\n";else  cout << "(++y == 3) not evaluated\n";

Looks like it is an error in the book.

How about them apples?

Super Pancake

122

December 27, 2006 11:27 AM

Hello I'm having a problem with one of the examples in the book Listing 2.7 pg 37 FUNC.cpp

originally in the book it looked like this.

#include <iostream>int ADD (int first, int second){	std::cout << "In Add(), received " << first << " and 		" << second << "\n";	return (first + second);}int main(){	using std::cout;	using std::cin;	cout << "I'm in main()!\n; 	int a, b, c;	cout << "enter two number: ";	cin >> a;	cin >> b;	cout << "\nCalling Add()\n";	c=Add(a,b);	cout << "\nBack in main().\n";	cout << "c was set to " << c;	cout << "\nExiting...\n\n";	return 0;}

and got these errors

functions.cpp(4) : error C2001: newline in constant
functions.cpp(5) : error C2017: illegal escape sequence
functions.cpp(5) : error C2001: newline in constant
functions.cpp(5) : error C2146: syntax error : missing ';' before identifier 'n'
functions.cpp(5) : error C2065: 'n' : undeclared identifier
functions.cpp(5) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'string'
functions.cpp(6) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before 'return'
functions.cpp(15) : error C2001: newline in constant
functions.cpp(16) : error C2144: syntax error : 'int' should be preceded by ';'
functions.cpp(21) : error C3861: 'Add': identifier not found

then edited it to this

#include <iostream>int Add (int first, int second){	std::cout << "In Add(), received " << first << " and " << second << "\n";		 return (first + second);}int main(){	using std::cout;	using std::cin;	cout << "Im in main()!\n";	int a, b, c;	cout << "Enter two numbers: ";	cin >> a;	cin >> b;	cout << "\nCalling Add()\n";	c=Add(a,b);	cout << "\nBack in main().\n";	cout << "c was set to " << c:	cout << "\nExiting...\n\n";	return 0;}

Edit: refined the code got less errors now and getting these errors

functions.cpp(22) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before ':'
functions.cpp(22) : error C2143: syntax error : missing ';' before ':'

Also I'm using Visual C++ EE

Thanks too the people here for this nice C++ workshop.

[Edited by - Super Pancake on December 27, 2006 4:27:42 PM]

nobodynews

3,128

December 28, 2006 02:37 PM

on this line:

cout << "c was set to " << c:

Look at the very last character very carefully. Give up? That's a colon(:). You need a semi-colon(;). A dot with a comma, not two dots.

C++: A Dialog | C++0x Features: Part1 (lambdas, auto, static_assert) , Part 2 (rvalue references) , Part 3 (decltype) | Write Games | Fix Your Timestep!

Dmitry 151

122

April 15, 2007 05:25 AM

what exactly is the std:: supposed to do in the first exercise. I have written it without it and it worked fine.

C++ Workshop - Getting Started with C++ (Ch. 1 & 2)

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