This two-inch-thick book is no quick introduction to C++. Rather, it is intended for a one- or two-semester course. It covers a lot of ground and, despite the rather diffident title, students will have learned a great deal by the time they finish it. The author has done a good job, although I do have some reservations, which I will go into later. The text is well organized and has all sorts of useful pedagogical features. The language is usually clear and down-to-earth. Topics are profusely illustrated by examples, and there are many exercises; answers to the odd-numbered problems are provided in the back. An instructor’s manual contains answers to the even-numbered problems, along with other teacher’s aids. An interesting pedagogical feature is a software development project--a point-of-sale program for a fictitious small bookstore--that runs throughout the book. The discussion of the project in each chapter shows how the programming techniques introduced in the main part of the chapter are used.

The book is intended for both students who are new to programming and those who have had experience with other languages. It starts with an introduction to programming and program design. The next chapter explains the elementary features of C++, introducing such concepts as data types and variable declarations. Students next learn to work with mathematical operations, strings, and characters. Chapter 4 covers the various kinds of “if” statements that are used to control the program logic. Next, do-loops of various kinds are introduced. This is followed by a chapter on functions and their uses, such as program modularization. Arrays, pointers to memory locations, and characters and strings are covered in the next three chapters. Two chapters on structured data and file operations follow.

In the final three chapters, the central feature of C++ (object-oriented programming) is dealt with directly. Up to this point, the author brings it up peripherally, weaving it into the text as a kind of counterpoint to procedural programming. I found those discussions the least useful part of the book, because they are too abstract to be meaningful. One cannot do anything practical with them, and programming, like shoelace-tying, is best learned by doing. In these last three chapters, however, the key concepts of classes, inheritance, and polymorphism are treated directly, using realistic problems and illustrative examples. This section of the book is, without doubt, the most demanding.

The book is well put together. I found no misspelled words or mangled syntax. There are some minor flaws, however. The index is organized, in places, according to a logic I cannot fathom. For example, “file” comes after “file stream” and “file errors” comes after “file output.” Another problem is the author’s occasional tendency to talk around his subject and to unnecessarily defer explanations. For example, on page 9, in the very first discussion of the specific parts of a C++ program, he points out the keywords “void” and “main” but does not say why they are there. Later on, in another connection, he even remarks that readers are probably wondering about an item in the program and says that the topic “will be discussed later.” It is--much later. I believe it is better to provide immediate explanations, even incomplete ones, to give students the feeling of having learned something concrete, however small.

These reservations are minor, however. Clearly, this textbook is intended to begin turning students into professionals, and they will surely be using it as a reference long after they have completed the course.