History of C++

 

C++

Language

Standard library headers

Concepts

Utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Algorithms library

Iterators library

Numerics library

Input/output library

Localizations library

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Atomic operations library (C++11)

Thread support library (C++11)

 

C++ language

General topics
Preprocessor Comments Keywords	Escape sequences History of C++
Flow control
Conditional execution statements
if statement	switch statement
Iteration statements
for loop range-for loop (C++11)	while loop do-while loop
Jump statements
continue statement break statement	goto statement return statement
Functions
function declaration
lambda function declaration
function template
inline specifier
exception specifications (deprecated)
noexcept specifier (C++11)
Exceptions
throw expression	try-catch block
Namespaces
namespace declaration	namespace aliases
Types
fundamental types compound types enumeration types	union types function types
decltype specifier (C++11)
Specifiers
cv specifiers
storage duration specifiers
constexpr specifier (C++11)
auto specifier (C++11)
alignas specifier (C++11)
Initialization
default initialization value initialization zero initialization copy initialization direct initialization	aggregate initialization list initialization (C++11) constant initialization reference initialization

Literals
integer literals character literals floating-point literals string literals	boolean literals nullptr (C++11) user-defined (C++11)
Expressions
value categories order of evaluation	operators operator precedence
alternative representations
Utilities
Types
typedef declaration
type alias declaration (C++11)
attributes (C++11)
Casts
implicit conversions
const_cast conversion
static_cast conversion
dynamic_cast conversion
reinterpret_cast conversion
C-style and functional cast
Memory allocation
new expression	delete expression
Classes
class declaration this pointer access specifiers	friend specifier initializer lists
Class-specific function properties
virtual function override specifier (C++11) final specifier (C++11)	explicit (C++11) static
Special member functions
default constructor copy constructor move constructor (C++11)	copy assignment move assignment (C++11) destructor
Templates
class template
function template
template specialization
parameter packs (C++11)
Miscellaneous
Inline assembly

 

Early C++

• 1979: C with Classes first implemented

1. New features: classes, member functions, derived classes, separate compilation, public and private access control, friends, type checking of function arguments, default arguments, inline functions, overloaded assignment operator, constructors, destructors, f() same as f(void), call-function and return-function (synchronization features, not in C++)
2. Libraries: the concurrent task library (not in C++)

• 1982: C with Classes reference manual published
• 1984: C84 implemented, reference manual published
• 1985: Cfront 1.0

1. New features: virtual functions, function and operator overloading, references, new and delete operators, the keyword const, scope resolution operator
2. Library additions: complex, string, iostream

• 1985: The C++ Programming Language, 1st edition
• 1989: Cfront 2.0

1. New features: multiple inheritance, pointers to members, protected access, type-safe linkage, abstract classes, static and const member functions, class-specific new and delete
2. Library additions: I/O manipulators

• 1990: The Annotated C++ Reference Manual

This book described the language as designed, including some features that were not yet implemented. It served as the de-facto standard until the ISO.

1. New features: namespaces, exception handling, nested classes

• 1991: Cfront 3.0
• 1991: The C++ Programming Language, 2nd edition

Standard C++

• 1990 ANSI C++ Committee founded
• 1991 ISO C++ Committee founded
• 1998 C++98 (ISO/IEC 14882:1998)

1. New features: RTTI (dynamic_cast, typeid), covariant return types, cast operators, mutable, bool, declarations in conditions, template instantiations, member templates, export
2. Library additions: containers, algorithms, iterators, function objects (based on STL), locales, bitset, valarray, auto_ptr, templatized string, iostream, and complex.

• 1998 The C++ Programming Language, 3rd edition
• 1999 Boost founded by the committee members to produce new high-quality candidate libraries for the standard.
• 2003 C++03 (ISO/IEC 14882:2003)

This was a minor revision, intended to be little more than a technical corrigendum

1. New features: value initialization
2. Defect Reports fixed: 125 defects, including defect 69, which made std::vector contiguous.

• 2006 Performance TR (ISO/IEC TR 18015:2006) (ISO Store) (2006 draft)
• 2007 Library extension TR1 (ISO/IEC TR 19768:2007) (ISO store) (2005 draft).

This TR is a C++ library extension, which adds the following to the C++ standard library:

1. From Boost: Reference wrapper, Smart pointers, Member function, Result Of, Bind, Function, Type Traits, Random, Mathematical Special Functions, Tuple, Array, Unordered Containers (including Hash), and Regular Expressions.
2. From C99: mathematical functions from math.h that were new in C99, blank character class, Floating-point environment, hexfloat I/O Manipulator, fixed-size integral types, the long long type, va_copy, the snprintf() and vfscanf() families of functions, and the C99 conversion specifies for printf() and scanf() families of functions.

All of TR1 except for the special functions was included in C++11, with minor changes.

• 2010 Mathematical special functions TR (ISO/IEC 29124:2010) (ISO Store) (2010 draft)

This TR is a C++ standard library extension, which adds the special functions that were part of TR1, but were not included in C++11: elliptic integrals, exponential integral, Laguerre polynomials, Legendre polynomials, Hermite polynomials, Bessel functions, Newmann functions, beta function, and Riemann zeta function.

• 2011 C++11 (ISO/IEC 14882:2011) (ISO Store) (ANSI Store) (Post-publication draft).

A large number of changes were introduced to both standardize existing practices and improve the abstractions available to the C++ programmers

1. New language features: auto and decltype, defaulted and deleted functions, final and override, trailing return type, rvalue references, move constructors/move assignment, scoped enums, constexpr and literal types, list initialization, delegating and inherited constructors, brace-or-equal initializers, nullptr, long long, char16_t and char32_t, type aliases, variadic templates, generalized unions, generalized PODs, Unicode string literals, user-defined literals, attributes, lambda expressions, noexcept, alignof and alignas, multithreaded memory model, thread-local storage, GC interface, range for (based on a Boost library), static assertions (based on a Boost library)
2. New library features: atomic operations library, emplace() and other use of rvalue references throughout all parts of the existing library, std::initializer_list, stateful and scoped allocators, forward_list, chrono library, ratio library, new algorithms, Unicode conversion facets
3. From TR1: all of TR1 except Special Functions.
4. From Boost: The thread library, exception_ptr, error_code and error_condition, iterator improvements (std::begin, std::end, std::next, std::prev)
5. From C: C-style Unicode conversion functions
6. Defect Reports fixed: 363 defects resolved by the 2008 draft and 322 defects resolved after. Notable defects include 530, which made std::basic_string objects contiguous.

• 2011 Decimal floating-point TR (ISO/IEC TR 24733:2011) (ISO Store) (2009 draft)

This TR implements the decimal floating-point types from IEEE 754-2008 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic: std::decimal::decimal32, std::decimal::decimal64, and std::decimal::decimal128.

• 2012 The Standard C++ Foundation founded
• 2013 The C++ Programming Language, 4th edition
• 2014 C++14 (2014 final draft)

Minor revision of the C++ standard

1. New language features: variable templates, polymorphic lambdas, lambda captures expressions, new/delete elision, relaxed restrictions on constexpr functions, binary literals, digit separators, return type deduction for functions, aggregate initialization for classes with brace-or-equal initializers.
2. New library features: std::make_unique, std::shared_timed_mutex and std::shared_lock, std::integer_sequence, std::exchange, std::quoted, and many small improvements to existing library facilities, such as two-range overloads for some algorithms, type alias versions of type traits, user-defined string, duration, and complex number literals, etc.
3. Defect Reports fixed: 149 library issues

Future development

• Library fundamentals TS, Filesystem TS, and other experimental technical specifications
• 2017 C++17

The next major revision of the C++ standard

External links

• Standard C++ foundation
• C++ on Wikipedia
• C++ Standards Committee