ACCU Reviews: C++ IOStreams Handbook

	[Home Page] - [Reviews Main]

Book Review

C++ IOStreams Handbook by Steve Teale
Recommended

ISBN: 0-201-59641-5 Publisher: Addison-Wesley Pages: 368pp Price: £30-95

Categories: advanced c++

Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 6-6 (Sep 1994)

C++ is a vast language, many times larger than C. Some aspects of the language are central to its effective use. One of these is the IOStreams library. Most books try to cover the relevant material in a single chapter. Such treatment is adequate as a first pass and for client programmers (those largely using other programmers code rather than writing substantial amounts themselves). It is quite inadequate for serious class design. Almost certainly you will be providing io facilities for your classes. To do so properly requires some understanding of the whole process - just knowing how to write a high level inserter or extractor is just not enough.

In this book Steve Teal concentrates on explaining the IOStreams library, how it works and how you can add your own functionality. The book would be useful simply for its clear and careful documentation of the library as delivered and I suspect that many 'experts' will be surprised to discover how much they did not know. When we add carefully written tutorial material on developing your own io resources the book becomes one that all serious programmers would benefit from reading. Those seeking to impress others with their knowledge of C++ will find that a covet reading of this book will allow them to greatly enhance their reputations.

Certain aspects of the iostreams library are still in a state of flux as continued development and refinement is carried out by the library working party of the ISO/ANSI C++ committees. As a result not everything that Steve says will remain true but he takes care to comment on those things that he knows are subject to change.

This book should be required reading for library and class designers both because it is an essential resource in developing io facilities for your classes but also because iostreams is itself a highly complicated class hierarchy (actually a dual hierarchy) that pushes towards the limits of class design as it was a couple of years ago.

Last Update - 13 May 2001.

To link to this review, please use the URL: http://www.accu.org/bookreviews/public/reviews/cp/cp000387.htm
Copyright © The Association of C & C++ Users 1998-2000. All rights reserved.
Mirrored from http://www.accu.org/