What is C++

What is C++?

INTRODUCTION TO C++

C++ is an object-oriented programming language. Initially named ‘C with classes’. Bjarne Stroustrup at AT & T Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, USA, in the early eighties, Stroustrup, an admirer of Simula67 and a strong supporter of C, wanted to combine the best of both languages and create a more powerful language that could support object-oriented programming features and still retain the power and elegance of C. The result was C++.

Therefore, C++ is an extension of C with a major addition of the class construct feature of Simula67. Since the class was major addition to the original C language, Stroustrup called the new language ‘C with classes’. However, later in 1983, the name was changed to C++. The idea of C++ comes from the C increment operator ++, thereby suggesting the C++ is an augmented (incremented) version of C.

C++ is a superset of C. Most also C++ Most of what we already know about C applies to C++ also. Therefore, Operator overloading. These features enable us to create abstract data types, inherit properties from existing data types and support polymorphism, thus making C++ a truly object-oriented language.

The object-oriented features in C++ allow programmers to build large programs with clarity extensibility and case of maintenance, incorporating the spirit and efficiency of C.

Applications of C++

C++ is a versatile language for handling very large programs. It is suitable for virtually any programming task including development of editors, compilers, databases, communication systems and complex real-life application systems.

Since C++ allows us to create hierarchy-related objects, we can build special object-oriented libraries, which can be used later by many programmers.

While C++ is able to map the real-world problem properly, the C part of C++ gives the language the ability to get close to the machine-level details.

C++ programs are easily maintainable and expandable. When a new feature needs to implement, it is very easy to add to the existing structure of an object. It is expected that C++ will replace as a general-purpose language in the near future.

Keywords

The keywords are also identifiers but cannot be user defined since they are reserved words. The following words are reserved and used as keywords. We should not choose them as variables or identifiers. It is mandatory that all the keywords should be in lower case letters.