* Alf P. Steinbach:
* arnuld:
>>Alf P. Steinbach wrote:
>>I don't think so, because I don't recall the book mentioning any program
called "DC".
ok, ok here is the complete thing:
is it really necessary to understand "Desk Calculator programme" in
chapter 6 to understand rest of
the book?
it is too complex for me to understand it. can i leave this section
(6.1) of Desk Calculatro and go directly to section 6.2 without much
loss?
What's the exact first /word/ in that text where it starts sounding
difficult?
Sorry, I'm beginning to see your problem.
I learned C++ from the first edition of TCPPPL, which was clear and
short and sweet, being based on K&R TCPL. Comparing it to the second
edition (someone got away with "borrowing" and never returning the third
edition, so I don't have it), which is four to five times heavier (in
weight) and much less readable: The very clear & short language overview
at the start of the first edition has been replaced with /long/ sections
of nothing particularly useful to know, in the second edition.
And without the clear language overview first, the desktop calculator
program may be difficult to grok; I mean, in the second edition not even
the 'for' loop has been explained at this point, not that 'for' loops
are explained later on either, except in the reference section. It was
of course properly explained in the first edition...
I therefore suggest looking up things in the reference section at the
back of the book.
That reference section is a very very positive feature of the book, and
before the standard of 1998 it served as a kind of de facto standard
(together with the Annotated Reference Manual book, the "ARM", now not
particularly useful).
Another reason why the program can be hard to understand is that it's
presented one small piece at a time, has some unreadable names, and uses
raw arrays and pointers and such.
So for your & others' convenience I've placed a version that has
(hopefully) more readable names, no pointer or raw array usage for most
of the code, and is in one single file, at <url:
http://home.no.net/alfps/misc/dc.cpp>.
--
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
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A: Top-posting.
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