Does the standard specify the official C++ grammar?
I searched, but did not find it anywhere.
Also, I wish to read a bit about C++ grammar in detail, like which category of grammars it falls in, etc. Any links pointing me in the right direction would be helpful.
By category, I mean
taken from here.
Yes, it does.
The grammar is described in detail throughout the standard and is summarized in Appendix A: Grammar Summary (it's Appendix A in both the C++03 standard and the C++0x final committee draft).
You can purchase the C++03 standard or you can download the C++0x FCD (it's document n3092 on that page).
To answer the "what category is it in?" question, the C++ grammar is not context-free (also see the questions linked in answers to that question; they have additional examples of issues related to the C++ grammar and parsing C++).
Alessio Marchetti put a hyperlinked BNF grammar for C++ up at http://www.nongnu.org/hcb/.
Having everything linked together and on a single page makes it easy to navigate between rules.
Andrew Birkett has a thorough overview of parsing C++ on his web site. It covers some of the difficulties in creating a C++ grammar (mixing lexical, syntactic, and semantic analysis) and includes links to several C++ grammars.
Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, wrote a book called The C++ Programming Language which has been updated many times (I read the 3rd edition about 10 years ago). I recall it had very technical details regarding grammar (pre-processor and compiler).
You can probably find this book in on of your local book stores, it may offer you more enjoyment than a standards document from ANSI, depending on how specific you need to be.
Not sure but as far as I see, James McNellis's link (to the pdf) contains a note on the first page:
Warning
This document is not an ISO
International Standard. It is
distributed for review and comment. It
is subject to change without notice
and may not be referred to as an
International Standard.
So, searched and I think this is the correct link to the official ISO:
http://www-d0.fnal.gov/~dladams/cxx_standard.pdf
Related
I was searching for C++ coding standard.
I found lots of standards:
Google C++ Style Guide
High Integrity C++ Coding Standard Version 4.0
...
Is there any C++ coding standard like PSR-1/21 that every C++ developer follows?
1) PHP Standard Recommendation. PSR-1: Basic Coding Standard. PSR-2: Coding Style Guide.
Is there any C++ coding standard like PSR-1/2 that every C++ developer follows?
The C++ language standard is made official by the ISO C++ Committee.
The standard comes with iterations and versionings (like c++-11, c++-14, c++-17) that are (mostly) backwards compatible.
That's actually what every C++ developer needs to follow.
If you're actually asking about coding style guides, that's a different thing, and no there aren't any common standards, beyond what's forbidden/discouraged from the c++ standard language.
Well, rethinking the standard style guide wording, there actually are established coding style standards like e.g. Misra C++.
You'll need to consider fulfilling these to get into certain business domains. You may think these are silly, and too restrictive, but still the customer wants you to fulfill these style guides.
It's your choice, and you'll need to estimate your extra efforts and costs (for e.g. investing in a static analysis tool that confirms standard compliance), and put that on the customers bill.
Even though I think the given answers are already good i would like to add the following comment:
There is a rather new project C++ Core Guidelines which tries to do what you are looking for (at least I think so). It is still in an ongoing process but IMHO it is already worth to take a look. There are also some nice talks about these guidelines
CppCon 2015: Bjarne Stroustrup “Writing Good C++14”
and
CppCon 2015: Herb Sutter "Writing Good C++14... By Default"
which explains its main purpose quite nicely. They emphasize static code analysis alot and in my opinion they try to push it alot with these guidelines.
But an important information is
FAQ.6: Have these guidelines been approved by the ISO C++ standards
committee? Do they represent the consensus of the committee?
No. These guidelines are outside the standard. They are intended to
serve the standard, and be maintained as current guidelines about how
to use the current Standard C++ effectively. We aim to keep them in
sync with the standard as that is evolved by the committee.
In the end it means, it is just another set of rules in the sense of the other answers.
No.
If there were a single style guide that everybody followed, why would there be multiple style guides?
For what it's worth, I don't follow anyone else's style guide, and in my opinion neither should you.
Your job may require you to follow a certain guide, but then you wouldn't be asking us which to use.
Notice that I refuse to call these style guides "standards".
After a quick search in draft N4296, I could not find any example of a name in the C++ Standard Library for which two possible spellings exists (BrE vs. AmE).
While this may even be intentional, I can imagine that at some point, if a graphics library will be standardized (and there seems to be some effort going in this direction), the choice between "colour" and "color" will have to be made.
Are there normative regulations or perhaps even informal criteria that are being used to decide which spelling to pick for names in the C++ Standard Library?
I'd expect that, if there were an official guideline, we should be able to find it in the Standard Library Guidelines on the committee's web site. Since there are a number of items regarding naming conventions and none of them mentions American versus British English, I can only conclude that such a decision has not been made yet.
As others have commented, there is prose and at least one function name in the standard that uses the American spelling so my bet would be that it would be preferred in case of doubt. From what I can tell, this is also what most other libraries do. The Boost Library Requirements and Guidelines, by the way, don't have anything to say about this issue either.
After having an answer here wrong, because I wasn't up to date on the C standard, I started to look for some place that gives a description of whats in the C and C++ standards.
I do not want the complete standards, of which I found links in Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?, or intimate technical discussions. Instead I would like something that briefly describes the standard, with references to the actual standard if I want to check it more thoroughly, and maybe saying which standard the feature was introduced in.
Is there such a resource available?
EDIT: A little background to the question: I have been programming C for over 20 years now, and when I learnt it not much was standardized. And what was in the official standard was not widely implemented. Through the years I have become good enough C programmer that my friends and colleges come to me for help when they have problems.
However, when I learned C I was told that things like memory layout for multi-dimensional arrays was implementation specific, and when I saw a question about that subject I said that it wasn't standardized only to be told I was wrong. But even knowing this, I have a hard time finding any place saying that it's in the standard, and it's even harder to find in which standard it was first introduced.
If there was some place saying "Memory layout of multi-dimensional arrays was standardized in C9x, in section Y of the standard document" It would have been easy to find and give this to the person asking the question. I am not intrested in what the actual layout is, just that it has been standardized, and where to look if I really want a definitive answer about it.
This of course goes for other things. Like knowing that header file "<yyy.h>" is mandated by standard "C90", and where in the standard I should look for the rationale and contents of it. It is very difficult to find these things when they are spread out, having it collected in one place would make it much easier to find.
Anything that's not the standard will either be not definitive, or be simplified in such a way as to be far less than useful. And anything definitive or really useful will basically be the standard.
I know of no resource that covers every section of the C standard (or even a sizable number of them) in a simplified way and I would doubt its usefulness. You generally have a specific issue you need solved and, in that case, you would search for that specific issue - the vast majority of people don't need the standard, especially when they have a resource like SO at their fingertips.
If you're a language implementer or enjoy examining the dark corners of the language in excruciating detail, then yes, get the standard, it's invaluable. If you're just using the language day-to-day (even as an expert), you can get by without it, with just a bit of googling (a).
(a) Make sure one of the search terms is site:stackoverflow.com :-)
I found http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp is now becoming pretty good! (always much more complete)
There is so much material in the standard there is just no way to briefly describe it. I don't think your question is really answerable as written. If you want a reference for the standard library though, Josuttis' book http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Library-Tutorial-Reference/dp/0201379260/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1320994652&sr=8-1 is always a fantastic reference.
I'm guessing you already are familiar with the older standards and want to brush up on the newer less-used stuff.
Here is a good read for C99. It covers changes and has notes to the actual standard. Also some stuff on C++ in there.
Wikipedia is great for C++11. Great for basics, but doesn't go into full detail.
If you fully understand the language then you can generally infer the standard. For strange corner-cases you're going to have to refer to the standard.
I think some of the other people answering this question are right: one seldom needs the ultimately authoritative ISO standard document, unless you are writing a compiler or something like that. For me, I find that the main books on the two languages by the language creators are sufficient for almost all my needs. They are:
The C Programming Language by Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie
The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup
Look for the latest editions of each, although a quick search on Amazon shows neither updated for the latest incarnations of the languages (C99 and C++11). You might need to supplement with online sources, or perhaps look at A C Primer Plus and Professional C++.
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Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?
I have several C books, and one of them, C by Discovery, explains the language very well. But so far I don't seem to have been able to find the full C/C++ language and library standards and lists of functions, types, etc., in whole detail.
Where is exactly a full standard for C99 and also the older, supposedly more commonly used and accepted, C language standards, the C++ language standards, and their libraries?
Is there some of them I must pay for, or should I just follow what Wikipedia and documentation like that of GCC cite?
Where else should I go to download or get them fully?
The Wikipedia article C99 has a link at the bottom to a draft of the C99 language specification. It is a draft because the final published version you have to pay for. But the draft is basically accurate, so it's a good reference. This is an extremely long specification of the entire language including the library, but possibly not what you are after. To just see the standard library, simply consult the man pages. Consult the Wikipedia article C standard library for a list and summary of the various functions.
For C++, the same deal. The Wikipedia article C++ has links to various drafts of the complete specification, notably the most recent draft of C++ from 2010 (the old C++, before C++0x comes into effect). The Wikipedia article C++0x has similar links to drafts of the soon-to-be-named C++ 2011 standard. But if you are just looking for a reference on the standard library, you can't go past cplusplus.com's reference section, which includes full documentation for the C library (in C++ mode), the IO library, and the STL (containers and other misc utilities). That's what I use as a day-to-day library reference.
The best online copy of C99 I've found is here:
http://busybox.net/~landley/c99-draft.html
If you want the actual standard, I don't think you can just download it. I believe you have to buy a copy from the American National Standards Institute. The GCC documents don't provide all the detail you need for the base language that GCC extended.
This question already has answers here:
Closed 11 years ago.
Possible Duplicate:
Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?
I want to use STL with the current program I'm working on and the vendor doesn't support what I feel is a reasonable STL, working is not my idea of reasonable. I have been unable to find a C++ Standard or an STL standard that is not just an API that leaves me wondering if my interpretation is correct or if the vendor interpretation is correct. I've already spent a great deal of time at SGI's site. Any reccomendations? Also, is there any document that's not an API that would be considered the standard?
The draft of the current C++0x standard is available from this page and the official homepage of the C++ standards committee is here.
Information on where to get the current standard document:
Where do I find the current C or C++ standard documents?
Other responses in that question have information on downloads of various drafts of the standards which can be obtained free (the actual ratified standards cannot be obtained free).
The Standard is available as a PDF for ANSI.org. ($18 last time I checked, downloadable).
$18 for a downloadable PDF was considered a breakthrough, since previously ANSI only sold it standards in hardcopy form, for several thousand dollars a copy. (Normally, ANSI standards have a very limit market -- only motorcycle helmet manufacturers are going to buy the ANSI Standard for motorcycle helmets etc), and Standard sales was the primary way ANSI financed it's operation.
Each national standards body in ISO can make the Standard available as they see fit. I'm told British Standards had made a deal to publish it in book form, but I don't know it taht ever came about.
i googled "C++ ansi standard" and clicked the first result
What's available for free on the
Internet?
The C++ standard went through two
Committee Drafts (CDs) which were made
available for public inspection and
comment. Changes made to the second CD
after the public comment period were
submitted to the member bodies for a
vote and became the official standard.
CD2 of the C++ standard is very
similar, but not exactly the same, as
the final standard.
body of a draft (see directory listing for TOC etc)
The book's ISBN is 978-0470846742, if you're interested in treeware. It's quite up to date (includes the Technical Corrigendum). You are right in suspecting it's the definitive resource when arguing with compiler vendors. The standard doesn't prescribe performance, but it does put upper bounds on the big-O complexity of many algorithms