Physics 405/905: C++ for Physicists
Spring Semester 1996

Instructor: David Bowser-Chao

Exercises: ftp homework
C++ standard (Working Draft April 1995)

Newsgroup msu.phy.class.405

Lectures

Disclaimer: These notes will sometimes fall short of infallible-but hey, I'm trying.

• -1. Overview
  1. What this is not
  2. What is C? (an overview, with all this covered in later lectures)
  3. Preliminaries
  4. What is C++ - the quick answer
  5. Getting started

• 0. Writing, compiling, and running C++ programs
  1. C++ compilation basics
     1. Files and filenames
     2. Editing
  2. Programming Basics
     1. Identifier
     2. Literal
        1. Integer literals
        2. Floating-point literals
        3. Character literals
        4. Strings (Character array literals)
     3. First Program

• 1. Types (part 1)
  1. Fundamental Types
     1. Objects and lvalues

     2. List of Fundamental types

  2. Simple declaration&definition

  3. Scope

• 1. (part 2 of) Types
  1. Declaring and defining functions
     1. Declaring functions

     2. Header files

     3. Defining functions

  2. What good are declarations?

  3. Standard (automatic) Conversions

  4. Explicit Conversion (casting)

• 2. Statements and Expressions

• 3. Pointers - Part 1

  1. What are pointers?

     1. Assigning Pointers

     2. Using (dereferencing) pointers

     3. What good are pointers?

        1. function calls by reference

        2. Multiple function return values

        3. Efficiency in argument passing

• 3. Pointers - Part 2

  1. Pointers used to access arrays

     1. const

     2. Initializers

     3. A short detour on different variable types (storage class, linkage)

        1. Storage class

        2. Linkage

     4. Accessing array elements

     5. Strings

• 3. Pointers - Part 3

  1. Strings (repeating a little from the last lecture)

     1. null-terminated strings

     2. String pooling

     3. String manipulations

  2. Pointer arithmetic and operators

     1. Pointer arithmetic

     2. Pointer comparison

     3. Pointer assignment

     4. Miscellaneous pointer operators

        1. Conditional operator ?

        2. sizeof() operator

     5. Pointers in flow control

     6. Tricky pointer points

• 3. Pointers - Part 4

  1. Variable arguments

     1. Using the macros in <cstdarg> (or <stdarg.h>)

     2. Implementing our own (non-portable) version of <cstdarg> to illustrate pointer casting

        1. typedef

        2. Macros and the preprocessor

        3. Non-portable code for va_start(), va_arg(), va_end()

        4. Code using our implementation of va_arg(),...

        5. Notes on ellipsis "..." operator

• 3. Pointers - Part 5

  1. Multi-dimensional arrays and pointers

     1. Initialization of multi-dim arrays

     2. sizeof() and multi-dimensional arrays

     3. Mult-dim arrays and pointers

        1. Row-ordered vs. column-ordered

        2. Array name conversion to pointer

        3. pointer arithmetic

        4. Pointer arrays, argc and argv, and command-line arguments

        5. ... and functions

  2. Dynamic allocation and creation

     1. Pointer arrays and dynamically-created objects

        1. Motivation

        2. An example of pointer arrays (implementing argc, argv[])

     2. new and delete operators

        1. Creating objects with new()

        2. Initialization using new()

        3. Destroying objects with delete()

        4. Creation with new[]()

        5. Destruction with delete[]()

        6. new operator and error-handling

• 4. References
  1. What is a reference?

  2. What references are not

  3. References for function call-by-reference
     1. Call by value

     2. Function arguments passed by reference

  4. References as function return values

  5. References for argument passing efficiency
     1. Fundamental types as arguments

     2. Structures