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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 ago

Fruny

1,658

June 03, 2006 04:53 PM

Quote: Original post by eektor
In Visual C++ 2005 EE, I use Build solution or Build [insert project name here], but I don't know how to run the code in the IDE. What I did was looked through the folders and I finally found the Hello World.exe and then ran it from there. Is there an easier way to do this?

Debug->Start Debugging (F5)
Debug->Start Without Debugging (CTRL+F5) -- will pause at the end of the program.

"Start Debugging" has a button on the standard toolbar. I generally add "Build" and "Start Without Debugging" next to it.

"Debugging is twice as hard as writing the code in the first place. Therefore, if you write the code as cleverly as possible, you are, by definition, not smart enough to debug it." — Brian W. Kernighan

eektor

182

June 03, 2006 05:20 PM

Thank you very much, Fruny.

DinGY

204

June 03, 2006 09:04 PM

Here is the collection question/answer that I collected from this thread. I hope this is helpful.

History Summary

Computer language was born since the first electronic computers were built. It was represented by long strings of 0 and 1. Because it was too difficult for normal people to understand and wasted too much time to create a simple program, Programming languages were invented to made thing easier and easier after time by time. C was created by Dennis Ritchie in 1971 and Bjarne Stroustrup developed C++ in 1980s based on C language.

What is compiler and IDE?

Compiler is a program that translates a computer language into object code which can then be assembled into machine language. This is necessary for programming in all high level languages (like C/C++ and Pascal) which are not interpreted (like BASIC).

IDE is an Integrated Development Environment. An IDE consists of all the basic tools a programmer needs to create a program. Typically, an IDE consists of a text editor, a compiler, a debugger, and other necessary tools.

[taken from GameDev.net Dictionary]

What the difference between <iostream> and <iostream.h>?

<iostream.h> is out of date and non-standard C++.

What the difference between "void main()" and "int main()"?

The C++ standard mandates that main() return an int. Anything else is incorrect. void main() is explicitely marked as being incorrect. That value is passed back to the program that executed your program (e.g. Windows GUI or command line) and can be used in shell scripts (or batch files) to determine whether the program succeeded or not.

You do not actually have to explicitely return a value (though you still must define main() as returning an int), since "falling off" the end of main() is equivalent to returning 0.

Some compilers that were written before C++ got standardized accepted void main(). Outdated tutorials, or tutorials written by people with incompled or outdated knowledge may use void main() even though it is wrong. Same with books.

[Post by Fruny]

What the difference between "std::endl" and "\n"?

Use "std::endl" instead of "\n". std::endl does more than kick to the next line; It flushes the buffer to the screen. This isn't so important with console output, but makes a difference for file output. Also, I believe some operating systems may require more than just an endline (such as a carriage return), so it's best to keep your code platform independent.

[Post by Sr_Guapo]

Why I got error(s) when I compiled my program?

error C2065: 'endl' : undeclared identifiererror C2065: 'cout' : undeclared identifier

If you got errors like above. Please ensure you use "std::cout" and "std::endl" instead of "cout" and "endl". For example:

#include <iostream>int main(){   std::cout << "Hello World!" << std::endl;}

If you don't like std:: there are other 2 ways to omit it.

First Way

#include <iostream>using std::cout;using std::endl;int main(){   cout << "Hello World!" << endl;}

Second Way

#include <iostream>using namespace std;int main(){   cout << "Hello World!" << endl;}

DinGY
Yesterday is history.Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift"

Yu Une

122

June 03, 2006 09:50 PM

:) http://gravesworld.org/Code%20blocks.html yup, even debuged ok.

@AdamskiAirsoft you might want to enter this at line 2

#include <stdlib.h>;

And see if this works.
Hmm..?? CodeBlocks seems to be intermixing the two main.cpp files which is goofing up the compilation and building, so I'll be downloading a iso file on VC :)

[Edited by - Yu Une on June 4, 2006 10:50:02 PM]

DinGY

204

June 05, 2006 04:51 AM

Extra Exercises

It is 5th day for C++ Workshop and I want to give some Extra Exercises for testing their understand and improve their programming skill.

1. Write a program that print your name on the screen.

2. Track the errors on this code then fix the errors and guess what is this code do without using the compiler. There are 13 errors in this code

#include <iostream>int main(){   cout >> "There are many mistakes in this code." >> std::endl   cout >> "Can you help me fix all the bugs in this code" >> end >> endl;   cout >> "Thank You!" >> std::endl;}

3. Write a program that display something like this:

******* ************ *****

4. Write a program that ask the age of the user and display it on the screen.

For example:

How old are you? : 21You are 21 years old

5. Write a program that ask user to insert 2 numbers and then display the summary, subtraction and multiplication between those two numbers.

For example:

Please insert your first number: 5Please insert your seond number: 2The summary is: 7The subtraction is: 3The multiplication is : 10

Enjoy!

DinGY
Yesterday is history.Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift"

chigga102

100

June 05, 2006 05:41 AM

Here is what i got for your questions
#1

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
std::cout << "Ashani Collins" << std::endl;
return 0;
}

#2
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
cout <<"There are many mistakes in this code."<< endl;
cout <<"Can you help me fix all the bugs in this code" <<endl;
cout <<"Thank you!" << endl;
return 0;
}

#3
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
cout <<"*******"<< endl;
cout <<"*****" <<endl;
cout <<"*******" << endl;
cout <<"*****" << endl;
return 0;
}

#4
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
int age;
cout <<"Please Enter your age: ";
cin >> age;
cout <<"\nYou are "<<age<<" years old" <<endl;
return 0;
}

#5
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
int firstNumber;
int secondNumber;
cout <<"Please insert your first number: ";
cin >>firstNumber;
cout <<"Please insert your second number: ";
cin >>secondNumber;
cout <<"\nThe summary is "<<firstNumber + secondNumber<<"\n";
cout <<"The subtraction is " <<firstNumber - secondNumber << "\n";
cout <<"The multiplication is "<<firstNumber * secondNumber <<"\n";
return 0;
}

That is what i got for the answers to your questions.

warsen

123

June 05, 2006 08:20 AM

Stephen R, thanks for expanding on the definitions from the book. invisal, thanks for the summary and the extra exercises.

I wanted to make sure I understand commenting, because the book doesn't explicitly answer this:

Is it correct that you cannot nest a set of slash-star comments within slash-star comment? For example:

/* outer comments

/* this nested comment will not work
because the second slash-star above will be ignored
*/
and the star-slash above will be taken as the end of the outer comments
leaving an extra star-slash hanging below
*/

Fruny

1,658

June 05, 2006 08:35 AM

Quote: Original post by warsen
Is it correct that you cannot nest a set of slash-star comments within slash-star comment?

It is correct. The C preprocessor does not support nested comments.

Incidentally, I'd like to point out that you are encouraged to try things out on your own. When you believe you understand something, write up a small program that does nothing but test that understanding, and see how the compiler responds to it. Sure, the only thing you'll learn is how that compiler reacts, which is why it is good to have multiple compilers to test things on, but the experiment is still valuable. Do not limit yourself to those examples and exercises that are found in your book.
There's absolutely no shame in doing that -- I do that all the time, especially when answering questions here (to make sure that what I propose really works like I think it does). I have a "project" dedicated to that purpose, with a single source file that gets overwritten over and over.
And it is also much easier to figure things out on a small example than to try and directly integrate a feature you don't understand perfectly into a larger project (<fanboy> Which is why python is so great, since it lets you try things interactively. </fanboy>)

[opinion]
In fact, I'd go to the extent of stating that if you're not willing to experiment by yourself with small snippets of code, you have no business being a programmer.
[/opinion]

warsen

123

June 05, 2006 10:42 AM

Quote: Original post by Fruny

It is correct. The C preprocessor does not support nested comments.

Incidentally, I'd like to point out that you are encouraged to try things out on your own.

Thanks for the reply.

I agree on the experimentation. I leave out parts of the sample code to see what happens and try alternate code to see if I actually understand what's going on. It's the best way to get something to stick.

Of course, if I figured out everything on my own this would be an empty thread. ;)

kaydash

100

June 05, 2006 12:52 PM

Finally got my book today(5th edition). Though late, I got it for $10. I'm cruising through the first 2 chapters, I'll post my report soon!!!

I Have Awoken.

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

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