From Mathematics to Generic Programming

Appendix C. C++ for Non-C++ Programmers

This book generally uses a subset of C++ that should be easily understandable to most programmers who have used a language like C or Java. However, there are a few important features and idioms specific to C++ that we rely on. These are described in this Appendix. Except where noted, we use only features of C++ that have been available in the 1998 standard version of the language. For a good brief introduction to C++11, see A Tour of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup. For a complete reference, see Stroustrup’s The C++ Programming Language.

C.1 Template Functions

One way C++ supports the generic programming paradigm is through the use of templates. Suppose you have a function like this:

int my_function(int x) { ...