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Borland C++ 3.1 Object-Oriented Programming (2nd edition) by Ted Faison Highly Recommended

ISBN: 0-672-30140-7       Publisher: Sams       Pages: 1107pp & disk       Price: £36-50

Categories:   object oriented     borland

Reviewed by Peter Wippell in C Vu 6-1 (Nov 1993)

It is a thorough exploration of Borland C++ 3.1, illustrated by many listings, all of which are provided on the companion disk. Ted Fashions choice of topics is interesting and his style is sympathetic and readable. Unlike so many C++ authors, who pay lip service to C++ but revert in the detail to their old ways, he is totally committed to C++, and makes full use of its features.

A major selling point is the full treatment of streams and container classes. Inheritance is used to customise practically every class in the hierarchies!

I don't believe that any other book covers TurboVision for C++ so fully. One of the first classes which you meet is called TProgInit, a virtual ancestor of TProgram, which has no member functions and three data members, all of which are pointers to static member functions! No wonder they say that you must be happy with C++ before you start on TV. Borland use TurboVision for their own products, and the author devotes many examples to explaining how to copy the special effects found in their IDE. This approach is highly instructive. Being familiar already with how the program works, you can concentrate on following the code.

Similarly, the Windows programming section also covers OWL, deals in depth with Borland Custom Controls, and describes a floating tool palette like the one in the Resource Workshop. Here classes are used in an interesting way to form closures around routines requiring Device Contexts, in order to achieve more reliable code.

This is not to say that there are no errors. Oddly enough, the key word, "delete[ ]", is ignored throughout. Even in BC++ 3.1, the "[ ]" remains essential for deleting arrays of "classes which require a destructor". I really think that defining TV help contexts, hcNoContext and hcNocontext, as one and the same thing amounts to deliberate obfuscation! The companion disk can only be decompressed onto drive C and the LHA file is hidden to try to stop you changing it. I am sure that this is a unnecessary irritant.

Although this second edition covers version 3.1 of both Borland C++ and Windows, it has not really caught up yet. There is nothing about Multimedia or Borland's two new contributions to Windows programming: STRICT and Message Crackers.

Buy this book if you intend to make full use of a BC 3.1 compiler. You can hardly do without it. Don't take it to bed with you though; it's too heavy!