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Object-Oriented Software in ANSI C++ by Michael Smith Not Recommended

ISBN: 0 07 709504 9       Publisher: McGraw-Hill       Pages: 474pp       Price: £24.99

Categories:   beginner's c++     object oriented

Reviewed by Yechiel M. Kimchi in C Vu 12-3 (May 2000)

Here are some additional confusing examples

• Target readers. The back cover claims 'Assumes no previous knowledge of programming.' while the preface states 'This book is aimed at programmers who wish ...'
• Teaching style and coding. The first chapter that introduces C++ has the following lines of code (p. 40)

  std::cin>>std::resetiosflags( std::ios::skipws );
  while(std::cin >> ch, !std::cin.eof()){
  	std::cout << ch;
  }

  1. The smallest problem here is the fact that operator! had not even been introduced.
  2. std::cin is used all over the book. Nowhere could I find the directive using namespace std; not even in the chapter dealing with namespaces.
  3. The usage of eof() is not a bug here, only because ch is of type char. I easily found a similar piece of code which was buggy (p. 402)

     int num;
     while(cin>>num, !cin.eof()) {
     	// whatever
     }

     1. This causes an infinite loop if the input is not an integer.
     2. Why not std::cin? Because here, cin is a local variable!
     3. The type of cin is istrstream, a type designated by the standard as depreciated.

More examples of errors can be found on my page http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/users/yechiel/CS/BadBooksC+C++.html#OOSCPPsmith