August 1993 - C/C++ PROGRAMMING


FEATURES

THE HISTORY OF PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES

by K.N. King

It's been 15 years since the first History of Programming Languages conference brought together the inventors of Fortran, Basic, Lisp, Cobol, APL, and the like. In this special report, we cover this year's History of Programming Languages II conference which assembled the designers of C, C++, Pascal, Smalltalk, Ada, and other languages.

C/C++ STANDARDIZATION: AN UPDATE

by Rex Jaeschke

Rex, who's an active member of the Standard C, ISO C, and numerical C extensions groups, brings you up to date on C and C++ standardization processes.

STRATEGIES FOR BETTER LINKED LISTS

by Garyl Hester

Linked lists are fundamental tools used by any application that deals with variable types and data. Garyl discusses linked-list theory and presents a generic linked-list toolkit written in C.

C++ TEMPLATES

by Pete Becker

One of the benefits of C++ templates is they make it easier for you to write custom tools. From parameter types to instantiation, Pete turns templates inside-out, while Doug Reilly builds a C++ virtual-array template class to show how templates can be used.

CALLING C FUNCTIONS WITH VARIABLY DIMENSIONED ARRAYS

by John W. Ross

When it comes to passing multidimensional arrays, C could learn a few tricks from Fortran. John presents a programming technique whereby you can pass these arrays to a C function.

INDEXING IMAGE DATABASES

by Art Sulger

Document-imaging systems must store and retrieve large amounts of unstructured data. The algorithm Art presents here, implemented as a C++ class, is the basis of an indexing system that accomodates many different image-file formats.

EMBEDDED SYSTEMS

PROGRAMMING THE MOTOROLA 68332

by Jack J. Woehr

Jack examines Motorola's 68332 time-processing unit (TPU) and queued serial module (QSM), presenting Forth code for programming QSM registers.

NETWORKED SYSTEMS

NETWORK ACCESS TO CD-ROMS

by John H. McCoy and Wuhsiung Lu

To provide access to CD-ROMs across a NetBIOS-based network, John and Wuhsiung implemented this client/server architecture which supports file redirection and ancillary MSCDEX functions.

EXAMINING ROOM

INTEGRATING DESKTOP MAPPING WITH GEOGRAPHIC DATA

by Peter D. Varhol

Mapping engines give you tools for combining mapping functions with traditional database or spreadsheet data. Peter shows how TerraView, a C library for displaying and manipulating maps, teams up with the Microsoft Access database system.

PROGRAMMER'S WORKBENCH

A QUICK PORT WITH QUICKWIN

by Al Williams

Al ports Turtle, his DOS-based turtle-graphics program, to Windows 3 using QuickWin, the Visual C++ library designed for DOS-to-Windows ports.

COLUMNS

PROGRAMMING PARADIGMS

by Michael Swaine

What the heck is going on at Apple? Between (what he refers to as) MacOpen, MacDOS, Macnix, MacRISC, and MacNeXT, our MacMichael wonders how far Apple can push the cross-platform envelope.

C PROGRAMMING

by Al Stevens

There's more to building a custom PC keyboard than parts and cables--you also have to know how the keys interact with the electronics. Al presents software that reads and displays I/O ports, gets keyboard scan codes for the selected keys, and converts push-buttons to keystrokes.

ALGORITHM ALLEY

by Tom Swan

To understand Windows bitmap compression, Tom writes a set of test programs that compress and decompress pixel values stored in plain text files. He then describes the algorithms and presents two C++ programs in the test suite.

UNDOCUMENTED CORNER

edited by Andrew Schulman

Windows .RES files, generated by the Windows resource compiler, contain the binary images of Windows menus and dialogs prior to their inclusion in executable files. Alex Fedorov and Dmitry Rogatkin unravel the .RES file format.

PROGRAMMER'S BOOKSHELF

by Ray Duncan

Ray wraps up his multipart review of Internet books and provides a comprehensive list of Internet-focused books.

FORUM

EDITORIAL

by Jonathan Erickson

LETTERS

by you

SWAINE'S FLAMES

by Michael Swaine

PROGRAMMER'S SERVICES

OF INTEREST


Copyright © 1993, Dr. Dobb's Journal