Exercises (Try these and Drills) from Bjarne Stroustrup's Programming, Principles and Practice Using C++ (2nd Edition)
(The canonical repository is hosted on https://gitlab.com/0p3r4t4/PPPUCPP2nd)
After more than a decade without doing any serious programming (some bash and Python for system administration tasks do not count, I guess) I faced a required massive modification of an old C program and got bitten again by the coding snake.
I have two main points to struggle with:
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A strong sense for a need to return to the basics.
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A personal debt with C++, having already used it but just as a glorified C with classes (and from I've learned recently, doing so rather poorly and mistakenly).
I hope that Programming, Principles and Practice Using C++ could cope with those.
To be clear, I return to programming as a hobbyist. A full time job as a sysadmin and two children don't let me be more ambitious. But that's fine to me.
At first I only want to have a repository that I could synchronize and use through my two personal systems and, perhaps, my mom's PC while visiting her. Also, being very used to subversion, I saw an opportunity to play a bit with git. As a very shy person, I choose GitLab(.com) (as opposed to GitHub(.com), although after the 20170131 database incident I setup a mirror repository on https://github.com/0p3r4t4/PPPUCPP2nd) mainly, if not only, by the unlimited private repositories.
As I proceeded through the book I've searched for references to compare my exercises with. And I found it tremendously useful; find a better solution and learn from it, catch those little details that I've disregarded, or, in the rare ocassions when it happens, the triumphal sensation of thinking "my solution is better", are all enriching experiences. And since I found enrichment on others' job, it will be greedy not to share mine (you never know if, or when, it will be useful to somebody else).
I'm neither a seasoned programmer nor a newbie, so despite learning new things through the study of the book, I also know a few things explained later or not exposed at all (not a criticism since the book has its scope).
So, although I've tried to restrict myself to the contents of the book, sometimes I investigate and go a little bit further, both right and wrong. I feel that this behaviour is somehow enforced by the author in his perspective about what programming is (or at least in how I understand him). In spite of this, I think I don't deviate that much, so if somebody studying the book uses this repository as a reference, there will be no problem to understand these little oddities of mine.
As a point of fact:
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I don't use
keep_window_open()since in Linux it annoys me more that it helps me. -
I tend not to use
error()function provided bystd_lib_facilities.h. Somehow I feel better throwing on my own. -
I sometimes, as an user, don't buy the
a program is allowed to terminate after finding an errorassumption to the point that an user's input error causes no further opportunities.
Well, the former is truth until exercise 10 from chapter 6, where I realize I'm pretending to be smarter than I actually am:
- using exception mechanisms wrong, being far from undestanding them correctly, and going into well known pitfalls (as doing flow control with them).
- doing some bizarre coding to not terminate the program in case of certain errors and failing to understand that I'm learning step by step and far from being capable of doing bulletproof programs.
In summary, I changed my mind and admit
error()anda program is allowed to terminate after finding an erroras the pedagogical tools they are. So expect a mix of solutions, some of them not too inspired.
Some exercises have a companion file with a .input extension. Those are input samples to quickly test programs with the help of command redirection.
In construction
As an elderly, my memory is not what it used to be and I force myself to take some notes from time to time:
- Use of compilers and tools. Don't expect a dense compilation here, as it's biased by my work environment.
- Use of Git and Gitlab.com. This could be included into "compilers and tools" but I prefer to have it separated.
- Literature. Mainly articles, references and guidelines that I read, voluntarily or by accident, and found interesting.
- Tips and tricks. Aspects of programming and C++ that are not, or not yet, covered by the book but I want to remember once I faced or used them.
In construction
Let me tell you that this book is hard. If you are committed to do almost every drill and exercise, and have a family and a full time job (oh! and you're watching American Gods, playing Mass Effect Andromeda, reading Gödel, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid, and so on ...) this book will accompany you a fair long time.
And because of its hardness I find it much more valuable. Programming is a difficult task (and I mean DIFFICULT) and the author constantly remembers you this fact, both explicitly and implicitly. Just as real as it is.
Implicitly because in his step-by-step approximation he shows you how you are previously mistaken or not so successful in getting ahead with the tasks proposed. He nicely do so by a writing style that is just a mental speech from a real and seasoned programmer. If you are new to programming perhaps you don't get how useful and what a timesaver this could be.
Implicitly because the exercises are fairly poor balanced, ranging from trivial to those where you will cry out "I give up!", and exercise statements are sometimes like a bad requirements elicitation and you can't simply do what is stated but something more for your solution to correctly work. Just as real as real programming job is.
As it sounds, it feels like a harsh review, but that would imply to underestimate the author, something I wouldn't dare to do in regard to Bjarne Stroustrup. Instead, I believe that all is an orchestrated master plan that, in the end, makes it work like a terrific good introductory text to (real and serious) programming.
I use mainly Ubuntu and derivative distros as programming platforms.
I use GCC version 5 as supplied for 16.04 release. If you want, or are in the need, to use more modern versions than those supplied by the standard repositories, you can install them from PPA:
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntu-toolchain-r/test sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install gcc-6 g++-6
I usually compile the exercises with a rather poor command line:
g++ -std=c++1z -Wall -o <exercise> <exercise>.cpp
I also use the great Termux for Android, which provides Clang instead of GCC, and serves well to program on the go.
Sometimes I perform static analysis on exercises with Cppcheck and Clang-Tidy. See notes on compiler and tools for more details.
I don't actually think that my source code in this repository deserves any licensing. It's far from useful in any real-world scenario other than for educational purpouses (and perhaps not even that).
I don't care about what could be done with the source code, so I choose a MIT License for one sole reason: the disclaimer of the warranty.
Said that, there are exceptions to my, almost complete, lack of interest in the licensing terms. Such exceptions are:
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std_lib_facilities.hfile present in each chapter directory and other supporting code supplied by Bjarne Stroustrup in the support site for the book are, of course, copyrighted by him. -
Problem statements heading almost every source file are excerpts from the book put there for my own convenience, and are, of course, copyrighted by Bjarne Stroustrup.
If you want to examine other solutions and coding flavours, don't hesitate on taking a look at these:
Of course, Bjarne Stroustrup's Selected Exercise Solutions
Also (with no order of preference):