newb questions

[parri]

Hi everyone

I am new to the forum and completely new to programming.

i started to learn C++ today with no previous experience in coding at all (apart from some very basic HTML).
i am using a book that at first seemed great, but as im getting into it it seems that it might be quite inaccurate.

for example, i was building the first program, which is the hello world program, and in the book it tells me to put this code

#include <iostream.h>

int main()
{
    cout << "Hello World!\n";
        return 0;
}

which did not work at all. after some googling and some helpful threads on this forum i managed to piece the problems together and ended up with this code

#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
cout << "Hello World";

 cout << "Press ENTER to continue...";
cin.ignore( std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max(), '\n' );

	return 0;
}

there are huge differences in these two codes, which makes me doubt the author of the book.

is the first code ok? does it depend on the compiler?

i used microsoft visual C++ express to build and compile it.
is that compiler any good? are there better free compilers around?


thank you all for the help, and sorry for the complete newb questions

[wildblue]

You might be using an older book if it still has <iostream.h> instead of <iostream>. Which book are you using and when was it published?

This modification of your original code should work. I'm just using a prefix of std:: on the cout instead of bringing the whole namespace std; line.

You can click on the icon at the top right of the code box to run the code from the forum.

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    std::cout << "Hello World!\n";
    return 0;
}

The tutorial on this site has info on current compilers, just scroll down on this page. http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/introduction/

[IWishIKnew]

This is why I typically don't encourage the use of books to learn C++. I would suggest using the references of this forum, and the rest of the web (as I did). It's tough, but it's possible.

Here are a couple of resources to get you started:

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference

www.cppreference.com

the latter is a community attempt at formal documentation of the language. It's not great for learning from as a beginner, but when you come to understand the more advanced concepts, you will keep a copy of it on your computer like I do: it's incredibly handy to have a copy of the reference around in case you want to know somthing specific about somthing in the Standard.

:) hope this helps!

[parri]

thank you for the quick replies!

@wildblue

the book is "Teach Yourself C++ in 21 Days":

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Sams-Teach-Yourself-21-Days/dp/067232072X

it is from 2001 so that must be the problem.

i tested your version in the browser and it worked perfectly. one problem i encountered with the other code was that the console closed instantly, which i solved using the following code, which i got from the stickied thread here:

cout << "Press ENTER to continue...";
cin.ignore( std::numeric_limits<std::streamsize>::max(), '\n' );

would the console still close with your version? or is that because of my compiler?

thank you for the link, i will try one of those other compilers if i cant get on with this one.



@
iwishiknew

thank you for the great links, i will read through them and learn what i can from them.
one thing that caught my eye about the book i chose was that it seemed to start from the absolute ground and work from there, which is something i found hard to find.

hopefully the tutorials here will start at a level i can keep up with.


thank you both very much for your help.