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Book Review
C++ Solutions - Companion to The C++ Programming Language Third Edition by David Vandevoorde
Recommended
ISBN: 0 201 30965 3       Publisher: Addison-Wesley       Pages: 292pp       Price: £21.99
Categories:   beginner's c++    
Reviewed by Francis Glassborow in C Vu 11-1 (Nov 1998)
Back in 1990 Tony Hansen wrote an excellent book The C++ Answer Book in which he presented his solutions to the end of chapter exercises in the first edition of The C++ Programming Language (Bjarne Stroustrup). The second edition of the latter book was published the following year. Though there were considerable changes between the two editions of the book, the end of chapter exercises remained substantially the same. Developments to C++ dated Tony's book a little but it remained an excellent buy until the mid-1990s. The 3rd edition of The C++ Programming Language 3rd ed was a fundamental rewrite and many of the exercises were changed. If the questions have not changed the answers usually have. No that is not a joke. The way that a competent C++ programmer would code today is significantly different from the code of eight years ago.

David Vandevoorde has not attempted the kind of global coverage that characterised Tony Hansen's book. In C++ Solutions we have a much slimmer volume in which the author has been selective in which exercises he tackles. On the other hand the book has come out only a year after C++PL 3rd ed. and so should have more currency.

David fully deserves to be respected as a C++ expert and this book is worthy of your study if you are trying to achieve mastery of C++. However there is plenty of room for you to write your own set of answers to an entirely different selection of Bjarne Stroustrup's end of section exercises.

I recommend that you try the original exercises first before checking to see if David has provided his. One feature of David's work is that he sometimes adds a supplemental question of his own to make sure that you have to think about what you are doing. He does not provide solutions for his supplemental questions :-)

A book worthy of your study if you are anything less than a C++ expert.


Other Authors with the same surname

Vandevoorde
C++ Solutions - Companion to The C++ Programming Language Third Edition by David Vandevoorde [Highly Recommended]  (Reviewed Jan 1999)


Last Update - 13 May 2001.

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