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The Complete Reference Visual C++ 5 by Chris Pappas & William Murray Recommended

ISBN: 0 07 882391 9       Publisher: McGraw-Hill       Pages: 998       Price: £30-99

Categories:   MS Windows     beginner's c++     beginner's c

Reviewed by Al Lines in C Vu 10-6 (Sep 1998)

Once these basics are out of the way, the book gets stuck into the fundamentals of programming. Being both a C and C++ book, it goes through the various keywords from both languages, along with examples in both. The examples are clear with the sample code being well written, e.g. returning from main. Next follows OO, leaving C behind. This could have been introduced earlier, but not without abandoning the C 'buyers'.

Part four is where the real visual/Windows information comes, with the MFC. This and the following part on wizards are likely to be of main interest to Visual developers. As for this being 'complete' I am not too sure, but it is comprehensive and gives programmers a good head start.

Certainly having the basics of C and C++ along with the IDE in one place is useful. Combined with the quite reasonable price, one to add to the bookshelf.

Pappas
Application Programming for Windows NT by William H Murray & Chris H Pappas  (Reviewed Jan 1994)
Borland C++ Handbook (Second Edition) by W. Murray & C Pappas  (Reviewed Jul 1992)
Borland C++ Handbook by William H. Murray & Chris H. Pappas  (Reviewed Nov 1991)
C/C++ Programmer's Guide by William Murray & Chris Pappas  (Reviewed Nov 1996)
Microsoft C/C++, the Complete Reference by Murray & Pappas  (Reviewed Sep 1993)
Turbo C++ Professional Handbook by William H Murray & Chris Pappas  (Reviewed Mar 1991)
Visual C++ Handbook, The by Murray & Pappas  (Reviewed Jul 1995)
Visual C++ Templates by William Murray & Chris Pappas  (Reviewed Sep 2000)