A Tour of C++, 3rd Edition

2

User-Defined Types

Don’t Panic!

– Douglas Adams

• Introduction

• Structures

• Classes

• Enumerations

• Unions

• Advice

2.1 Introduction

We call the types that can be built from the fundamental types (§1.4), the const modifier (§1.6), and the declarator operators (§1.7) built-in types. C++’s set of built-in types and operations is rich, but deliberately low-level. They directly and efficiently reflect the capabilities of conventional computer hardware. However, they don’t provide the programmer with high-level facilities to conveniently write advanced applications. Instead, C++ augments the built-in types and operations with a sophisticated set of abstraction mechanisms out of which programmers can build such high-level facilities.

The C++ abstraction ...