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C++: The Complete Reference Review by Jared M. Jacobson

Neither complete nor a great reference

While this book does touch on many of the features of C++, it doesn't discuss them in enough detail to make them useful.

Motivation is particularly lacking: even when the book explains a given feature, it doesn't provide much guidance (if any) on why the feature exists or how it's useful. For example, friend classes are mentioned, but the description of why you might want to use such a thing is completely absent. There's just a statement that, "Friend classes are seldom used. They are supported to allow certain special case situations to be handled." That explanation is a poor substitute for a brief statement about why they're seldom used (data encapsulation violation) and when it might be appropriate to use them.

The section on wide character functions is similarly lacking. The book describes what they are and how to manipulate them, but it is completely silent on why wide characters exist and the implications of using an ASCII character array (very poor internationalization). This is almost unforgivable in the era of global software.

The section on the STL is hard to read and skimpy on detail. The templates chapter is likewise thin; after reading through it, I was still unable to do anything useful with templates. The section just left too many questions unanswered.

That said, I refer quite often to the sections on operator overloading and exception handling. For me, those are the shining stars in this book (although, again, motivation for using them is lacking).