C++ Primer Plus (6th Edition) (Developer's Library)

This book is a good introductory course to the c++ programming language. Although I do not consider myself an absolute beginner for programming, I must admit that the material in this book consolidates what I know, and what I don't know. The balance between code structure over general problem solving signifies how important it is to properly learn a new programming language. It is for this purpose that I take on my free times and devote myself into the book, reading about how others write and structure their syntax is the essence of my learning. The book is very dense. I spent my whole day reading it and have barely make it pass 80 pages. There are concepts and applications that you must work hand to hand with the writer, just so to gain some practical experience before it is your turn to code. I like the book, and I do recommend it to others that are interested in this subject.

Reading this book is kind of like untangling Christmas lights while wading through a swamp. It is wordy and disorganized, with at least "but you'll read about that later" on every page. The author claims knowledge of C is not necessary to make use of this book, yet unleashes on the reader a deluge of constant comparisons to C.

Ultimately, even though it was a textbook required for a course, I wound up replacing it with Sams Teach Yourself C++ in One Hour a Day, to understand the general concepts, and when I needed a better understanding of all the minute variations and possibilities, I would refer to this book.

The quality of the book itself, as in the stack of paper glued together, was lacking. The pages in one section had been dogeared at some point in the printing process, resulting in them being cut improperly, and the spine broke rather severely around chapter 9 or so before I was halfway through chapter 1.

This book provides excellent and very detailed coverage of the C language. It's a long book with a small font, but if you really want to learn C well, reading this book will form a strong foundation. There's occasional wasted text on the quirks of some ancient compiler for an ancient system that seems like it was just carried over from older releases of the book, but otherwise I don't have any big complaints. It's a dense, very slow read, but highly recommended.

The best c++ book on the market. Great reference material for the pro developer and so well written that it is the only guide I recommend to a newbie wanting to start out.covers everything you need to know about c++.

This is an excellent book for both novice and seasoned programmers. Coverage of the standard library is a bit lacing though and there is no covering of the thread api which deserves a book of its own anyway.

This book has it all, examples, challenge questions, challenge programs, you name it. It is a little intimidating since it is quite long, but it reads very smooth, hitting on all the key topics. Great for beginners who need repetition--experts might get annoyed by this, however, each example focuses on a different aspect of the topic. If you are interested in learning C quickly or even touching up on forgotten skills, go out and get this book.

Stephen Prata's writing style is easy to understand and enjoyable to read. I have tried many C++ books and this is one I can finally understand and look forward to reading. I highly recommend this book to anyone wishing to learn C++. Tom

Overall I really like the portions I had the chance to read; however, some of the examples made it a little difficult to understand some of the concepts and I had to resort to Google for an example that made a little more since. I still find it amazing that modern programming languages (e.g. Java, C#, etc...etc...etc...) would be considered over a such a language as C++. Some of the concepts discussed pointed out differences from what I learned in C# and Java. For example, many trainers of C# point out that delegates are the same thing as function pointers; however, seeing function pointers in this book are similar yet extremely different than delegates in C#. Really an amazing language C++ is.

Excellent book that withstood the test of the time. Incidentally it has also sentimental value for me because many years ago, when I started my journey into progamming and had my first programming course in C itself, this book came to the rescue.

The course textbook was a different one, which after the first couple of introductury chapters became vague. Especially on pointers it lost me.

Then... I got this book. It started to read like an obsessive page turner. Once I reached the chapter on pointers I was amazed more-the topic in fact was extremly simple. I got very curious of the guys background. When I looked up that he was a physicist by upbringing, the great quality of the book made sence right away.

In one word, this book is THE BOOK as a first book in C, especially for new programmers.

After that ancient times, I red many C books of different complexity and scope, but this book still remains among few of my favorits for its lucid and extremly understandable coverage.

As you can guess, the book has a sentimental value for me.

In fact, if you have older version, especially last two, then there is no compelling reason to upgrade to this version.

Have you finished the book?
Now you are ready to enjoy the succinct C Programming Language, by Brian W. Kernighan, the author of C

I absolutely love this book. Before this book, I found C _extremely_ intimidating. CPrimerPlus goes the opposite route of K&R and provides thorough explanations as opposed to terse ones.

The exercises are also great. Each chapter has a series of exercises ranging in difficulty. Do yourself a favor and DO THESE. You don't know for sure if you've learned the content in the chapters unless you can do the exercises!

This edition is riddled with errors. Luckily, this seldom gets in the way of understanding and learning. Still, these mistakes are hard to disregard when each chapter has at least 2 programs which are broken from typos (extra brackets, missing arguments etc.). I'm a beginner and once spent several hours trying to understand a program which was typed wrongly into the book.

Hopefully the newer edition has addressed many of these issues! (I had bought this edition to save money)

To end on a high note, everything else about the book is absolutely top notch. This is the C bible. As long as you know what you're getting into with this edition, it comes highly recommended.

A preface about my programming knowledge: I am an experienced C programmer (since 2001) and have programmed for Linux, DOS, Windows, Palm OS, Mac OS X, and a few other systems (including my own OS). I have experience programming for x86, PowerPC, MIPS, ARM, and some SPARC. I also know C++, Java, and Pascal.

As for my review of the book, I have read the first 5 chapters of this book then skimmed the remaining portions of the book stopping at various unspecified locations to read the text. I have spotted an error or two but as long as you read enough of the surrounding text you should be able to figure out what it should be.

The text is descriptive and concise, it covers the current topic at hand with good context and detail. There are forward references to later concepts you will read about in later chapters, however when they are used it is not in a way that would confuse you if you never have programmed C before. I have not found any imposing of stylistic issues such as whether to use tabs or spaces, curly braces on the next line or same line, asterisk placement, etc., although the book sticks to one style (except in the cases to show valid programs formatted differently).

There are many different implementations of C and 3 major versions of C such as C89, C99, and C11. This book differentiates between such standards to inform you of whether a feature is part of C89, C99, or C11. The oldest standard throughout the book is C89 at least so you will not find K&R style function declarations. There are also mentions to note that if you run into trouble, such as compilation errors, that your compiler supports too old of a standard.

As for implementations and systems, the book says that you should not expect one system to be the same as another, which is something that I like.

There is a short reference at the back of the book as per the functions in the standard library along with information on which standard it is available for.

So in short, whether you are very new to programming or an old pro, this is a good book to have in your library.

first i would like to thank Stephen Prata . In summary , I consider this book a good start for someone looking to quickly get up to speed on c++. and you must read another primer with this to take a different look on c++.

This book is excellently written. It is written very clear and to the point.
The book is able to explain the extremely abstract concept
of class templates. Of all the books I own that
attempt to explain class templates, this book was
the only one that was able to do so without loosing me. C++ class
templates are, in my opinion, an extremely abstract concept that requires
a very skillful author to describe it adequately and accurately.
Stephen Prata has succeeded in doing that! Thank you so much for successfully
teaching me this topic that was once very intimidating and foreign.

This is an alround excellent book in that it explains what things are and what they do in a clear and understandable form. The principal fault, as with all books on the the subject of C++, is that some examples tend to be too complicated when something simpler would get the point across.

This book is simple enough for the beginning programmer and advanced enough to get you a very solid base in C. It is the best programming book I've read. I cant tell you how helpful it is. In my book all errors have been fixed. I bought it a few months ago so there shouldn't be any errors left anymore. The code for the book is easily attainable through Sams online website [...] too. Excellence!

I bought this book by a recommendation. This book have exact and very detailed info about C++ language. Nice examples and easy to understand. I recommend this book to everyone that wants to learn about C++ and/or C programmers that need to move to C++ programming.

The writing is very intelligible and comprehensive. The only complaint I have is there's no solutions provided for the programming exercises--only the chapter review questions. I'd like more in on GUI programming.
Also, I wouldn't recommend the Kindle version. The program code & figures are garbled in the Kindle version.

Used Kindle version. Code examples weren't clear in the Kindle version, each code statement with its comments were usually on one line as if it were in a sentence rather than each statement with comments being on its own seperate line. Also, several sentences had all the words mashed together rather than spaced out. Annoying to parse. Was cheaper than paper edition and definitely lighter.