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Advanced C++ Programming Styles and Idioms by James Coplien Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-54855-0       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 520pp       Price: £27-85

Categories:   advanced c++

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 4-2 (Jan 1992)

The problem is partly one of familiarity with the language. I am always amazed by those who tell me that one advantage of Pascal is its readability. I still find it difficult to follow, but I also find Japanese hard work I do not use either as working languages though my interests have required me to struggle with material in both. Another part of the problem is familiarity with the idioms and style of a language. Many of us know of foreigners who speak perfect English with excellent accents and yet we know that English is not their native language. Their idiomatic use is wrong, their style is often not that which a native English speaker would use. Coplen is tackling this aspect of programming in C++.

He has tried - largely successfully - to communicate the basic idioms of C++ developed by experienced programmers from their experiences. What he seeks to do is not just teach you about such topics as polymorphism but how to use such ideas to produce much more from your programs. One of the most impressive chapters is that on Emulating Symbolic Language Styles (those prevalent in languages such as Lisp and Smalltalk). C++ has inherited its tight binding between variables and objects from C. Classical object- oriented languages allow a much looser binding allowing for variables to be associated with different objects at different times.

Chapter nine of this book seeks to make similar facilities available to the C++ programmer (at a price, but TINSTAAFL). Over all the book is a tour de force and well worth working through if you want to improve your fluency with C++. It is not a book for the novice as the author legitimately expects you to know about real C++ programming (not just C compiled with a C++ compiler).