Tom Swan's GNU C++ for Linux [With CDROM]

I took C in college, and didn't use it much for years. I bought this book, and went through the examples one by one, and it was truly helpful to review C, as well as to learn OO programming. For a very large book, it's really easy reading, and even feels somewhat 'informal' while reading compared to many textbooks that are a very 'dry' read. Highly recommended for a reference guide to have at your desk, or for self-teaching C++

This book is for the programmer who comes from a different programming background and wants to become a professional C++ engineer. This book takes you through a structured education in the C++ programming language which you will be able to program in after reading through just the first half of the book. Also, the book teaches you how to use the GNU Debugger for C++, greatly speeding up your development time. The GNU Debugger and GNU C++ Compiler are free and should be already installed on every Linux box. Though free, the GNU C++ compiler and debugger are the result of many many programmers' efforts done on their free time making these two applications having better quality and more features than their commercial Windows contemporaries. As a teaching tool, this book carries with it a sense of wit and dry humor as it explains C++ concepts in a well structured and thorough manner, enabling the rapid learning of the language, especially if you come from another computer language, as I am Java Master and was pleased to find many similar constructs between Java and C++. This book also goes through all the pitfalls of programming in C++ and also on Linux. For example, after deleting the allocated memory of a pointer, you should set that pointer to zero so that should another delete be called, as in a class destructor, there will be no damage done, otherwise there would be a segmentation error. With the great recent advances in Linux as an alternative to Windows, learning C++ on this platform seems to me to be a good investment.

After a recent need for a carrer change I have spent the past couple of months working on getting my MCSD from microsoft. However I felt that I should not study purely microsoft development tools and decided to learn Linux and C++ programming. To achieve this I bought this book. It looked like it contained pretty much everything that I needed. It included a complete copy of Mandrake Linux 6.1 (Effectively an enhancement of Redhat 6.1 made to be a bit easier for begginners while still having lots of functionality). It also included the GNU C++ compiler for Linux with the distribution. Additionally it looked, on the surface at least, to be a very good introduction to C++ programming.It did not take me very long to get my system configured with Linux and ready to program. Having made it through about a third of the book so far I am more than impressed with the skill of Tom at describing difficult programming concepts. The examples are very good. After each sample he goes through the lines of code that are difficult to understand. he is very good at knowing what lines are needed to be explained in detail.On the whole I found this book to be just about perfect for someone like myself. A person who understands programming fundamentals,a nd can write at least simple programs in another structured language, but has very little experience with C or C++. I suspect that a person who knew very little or nothing about programming would have a great deal of difficulty with this book, as well I suspect that an expert would find it overly simplistic. But it is rated on the back as intermediate and that is exactly what this book is.Good work Tom! Martin Ritchie

I recently purchased Tom Swan's GNU C++ for Linux, and it is terrific, as were the others I have purchased over the years. There is something unique about Tom's writing style that has made seemingly complex issues easy for me to understand. He is an excellent communicator of difficult concepts, assumes nothing of the reader in his teaching, and heavily peppers the text with code to illustrate his points. This particular book has the added benefit of the full installation of the Mandrake Linux 6.0 on CD-ROM, which has won the LinuxWorld Editor's Choice award for 1999 as the Product of the Year.

This book comes with the LINUX operating system and a full program development environment on CD.The book does not require any previous knowledge of C++ or LINUX or UNIX or the GNU tools. All commands are carefully explained. It even explains how to use a Zip drive with LINUX. It even explains how to work around certain bugs in gdb.The book uses the step-by-step approach, with fully worked exercises in the text. All the code in the text comes on CD ROM. At each point in the learning process, the reader produces working code.There are helpful notes and warnings that are highlighted to emphasize their importance.It is both a tutorial and a reference, 800 pages of solid information. A full reference on every aspect of C++ on LINUX would take thousands of pages, and the book refers to the on-line LINUX documentation for topics (such as calloc) it does not cover in depth. The choice of the topics covered seems excellent. One will be quite competent in C++ if one works one's way to the end of the book.The one thing I find questionable is the author's choice to teach Xlib and V rather than the more popular GTK. On the other hand, covering GTK requires its own book, and an introductory book has to draw the line somewhere at what it teaches.I should also point out that there are lots of programming languages one can use on LINUX besides C++, for example, Perl, Java, Python, and Tcl/Tk. I don't mean this as a criticism of the book but if you want to start LINUX programming and you are new to programming one of these languages might be a better place to start since they are easier to learn than C++.As an ad says in the back of the book, Welcome to the Revolution.Que classifies the knowledge level as Intermediate . This is fair. While the book is self-contained, some knowlege of how to program and "computer maturity" will be very helpful.