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                             Issue #3 - Page 8 of 12 
        ³ÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄÄij

Radioactive_Raindeers guide to C/C++ programming.
Part 1 - The basics.

This is supposed to be a basic guide to C/C++ programming. When someone 
writes this kind of guide he/she is usually flooded with more questions 
from newbies
and comments and flames form the real pros. So I'll just ask you now:   
Please don't mail me! Not that I'd really mind. It's just that I probably 
wouldn't answer. You're better off asking questions on IRC and sending your 
flames to /dev/null on your local system.

I'll start this off with explaning the basic syntax of a program containing 
only one function and no variables. If you don't know what I'm talking 
about don't worry. It'll all be clear after you've read this.

Here's the program:

<---- code start ---->

#include <iostream.h>

int main(void) {
  cout << "ph33r me for I am text.";
  cout << "\n";
  return 0;
}

<----- code end ----->

Easy, eh?
For those of you who disagree I'll explain each line as clearly as I can.

#include <iostream.h>
 The pound (#) tells the program that it's a pre-processor directive. (More
 about those in another article.) This one tells it to include the 
functions in  the file 'iostream.h' for use in this program.

int main(void) {
 This line contains two important things. First it's the actual function 
and  the second a left curly bracket. A function started off with the type 
of  varible is returns. In this case it's an integer, followed by the name 
of the  variable and the parameters to the function inside parenthesis.  
The second part, the left curly bracket tells the compiler that from now on 
the  code belongs to this function.

cout << "ph33r me for I am text.";
 This line sends the text inside the double quotes to standard output. This 
is  the reason that we included iostream.h earlier.

cout << "\n";
 Same as above. But \n is a symbol for a new line.

return 0;
 Returns a value to the caller of the function. In this case it would be 
the  operating system.

}
 This right curly bracket tells the compiler the the function stops here.


Don't worry too much if you don't understand all of this right now. It will 
come to you later on. I'll talk a bit about varibles now.

A variable is a C/C++ entity that contains something. A number, a 
character, an object, an adress to another variable, etc. I'll just go over 
the basic ones right now though.

int
 Contains an integer (a whole number)
 Examples: 7, 132, 95, -35, 0

char
 Contains a character
 Examples: A, g, 6, ?, <

bool
 Contains either true or false.
 (Only available in ANSI/ISO C++ compatible compilers.)

float
 Contains non integer numbers (Numbers with decimals)
 Examples: 3.14, 12.34, 9.11e-31, -7.36

void
 A special type of variable. Basically just a variable placeholder where 
you  have to have a variable according to the syntax but you don't need one 
in your  program.


Since I want to keep this readable I'll stop here and continue in the nex 
issue. Then I'll talk a little more about functions and even more about 
varibles. =) Can't wait, eh?

That's all from me for now.

/ Radioactive_Raindeer
  r_r@diegeekdie.org