Essential C++

Chapter 2. Procedural Programming

Writing an entire program in main(), as we did in Chapter 1, is not very practical except for small programs written by a single individual. Typically, we factor common operations, such as calculating the elements of the Fibonacci sequence or generating a random number, into independent functions. This approach has three primary benefits. First, our programs are simpler to understand because they are a sequence of function calls rather than the code sequence to accomplish each operation. Second, we can use the functions across multiple programs. Third, it is easier to distribute the work across multiple programmers or groups within a project.

This chapter covers the basic rules for writing independent functions. ...