Jeff Cogswell

Creating a library project in C++ is only a little different than creating a console application. The following steps describe how to create a library project:Choose File→New→Project.You see the New From Template dialog box shown. Highlight the Static Library icon on the Projects tab, then click Go.You see the Welcome page of the Static Library wizard.

The static library starts with a standard C file. To make this library work well with templates, you need to delete the C file, add a C++ file, and add a header file. The following steps describe how to perform this process:Right-click main.c in the Projects tab of the Management window and choose Remove File From Project from the context menu that appears.

Most of the Boost library works just fine by adding headers to your application code. However, a few components, such as RegEx, require a library. Before you can use a library, you must build it. After you build the library, you must add it to your application.There are two techniques for adding the required headers and libraries to an application.

Click here to download the code example files for C++ All-in-One For Dummies, 3rd Edition. These files contain all the sample code from the book. Use them to work through all the C++ sample applications describe in our book. During the writing of this book, a few of our beta readers reported some odd behavior from their anti-virus programs.

Just as you can initialize a single-dimensional array by using braces and separating the elements by commas, you can initialize a multidimensional array with braces and commas and all that jazz, too. But to do this, you combine arrays inside arrays, as in this code: int Numbers[5][6] = { {1,2,3,4,5,6}, {7,8,9,10,12}, {13,14,15,16,17,18}, {19,20,21,22,23,24}, {25,26,27,28,29,30} }; The hard part is remembering whether you put in five batches of six or six batches of five.

When you create an application, you write your code in various source code files. For one application, you can have many different source code files. Some large corporate projects may have hundreds (or even thousands) of source code files with dozens of programmers working on the different files. As you can imagine, dozens of strong-willed programmers working together makes for quite an adventure; but by using tools like make, these programmers are able to easily work together.

Remembering a bunch of C++ syntax can make you "loopy." The following samples show the syntax of some of the more easily forgotten C++ situations: a for loop, a while loop, and a switch statement; a class and the code for a member function; a base class and a derived class; a function, function pointer type, and pointer to the function; and a class template and then a class based on the template.

In C++, a header file holds forward declarations of identifiers. Here are some of the most common C++ header files that you’ll be using, along with their correct spellings. These aren’t by any means all of them, but they are the most common: Include if you’re going to be using the string class. Include when you want to use cout and cin.

Although many C++ programmers take measures to prevent bugs, mistakes still slip through. This list of the ten most common mistakes while writing C++ code can help both new and veteran programmers: You forgot to declare the variable. You used the wrong uppercase and lowercase letters; for example, you typed Main when you meant main.