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C++ Code Examples

The following code examples have been developed to help students studying object-oriented programming in C++. They are listed roughly in the order a student will encounter these topics in learning C++ -- "roughly" because the exact order will always depend upon the student, the teacher, the textbook, and so on.

First of all, we have written a script to turn our C++ code into web pages. This first section will feature the code that has been converted (note that the formatting still needs improvement):

• A "Thing" class,
  used to demonstrate pointers and memory management.
• A complex number class,
  used to demonstrate operator over-loading.
• A class hierarchy of images
  This illustrates inheritance, overriding, the use of the virtual keyword, and a pure virtual class. It also uses memory allocation and freeing.
• Testing out the Standard Template Library
  The Standard Template Library is how C++ enables Generic Programming.
• Recursion examples
• Convert into "any" base
  This code uses recursion to strip off digits one-by-one. It is called in the recursion examples code above.
• Functors
  Shows a trivial and a more advanced use of a functor.
• Vector Experiments
  Code that explores various aspects of the STL vector class.

And beyond this point, we have "raw" code files, although nicely formatted by GitHub:

• Hello World!
  The paradigmatic first program to write in any language you are seeking to learn.
• Hello [YourName]!
  How to get input from the user, and then use that in your output.
• C++ function calls
  Explore the various ways (pass-by-value and pass-by-reference) we can pass values to a C++ function and get a result returned from that function.
• Using vectors
  Entering values into a vector then getting the mean of all values in the vector.
• Python loop over a vector
  For comparison to the similar C++ loop.
• Creating a new type using struct
• Turning the struct into a class.
  This file is also used to demonstrate operator over-loading.
• Implementing a class like vector on our own.
  Here we do more operator over-loading, including the [] operator.
• Passing a derived class to a function expecting the base class.
  Exploring polymorphism and the virtual keyword.
• Now let's make turn own vector into a generic machine for creating vectors.
  
• Code for gathering weather data.
  (The numbered files are various iterations of the program.)
  Within this program, particular classes / files address particular C++ features:
  
  • Copy control: Allocating and freeing memory.
    Code examples:
    image.cpp allocates a buffer for its image, and uses copy control to manage that buffer properly.
  • Multiple compilation units.
    Code examples:
    The entire project illustrates breaking code into separate compilation units.
  • Class heirarchies.
    Code examples:
    Both image.h and rawdata.h create a class heirarchy, which uses inheritance.
  • Polymorphism and virtual functions.
    Code examples: test_image.cpp is designed to illustrate polymorphism. We can create a vector of Image pointers, and expect that right sub-class method to be called if we ask to display() one of them, so long as display is declared virtual in the base (Image) class.
  • How polymorphism interacts with copy control.
    Code examples:
    rawdata.h and rawdata.cpp aloong with their test harness test_rawdata.cpp , are built to illustrate this theme.