Wrox Press C++ Tutorial

Summary

In this chapter, we've assembled all of the essential mechanisms for making decisions in C++ programs. We've also gone through all the facilities for repeating a group of statements. The essentials of what we've discussed are as follows:

• The basic decision-making capability is based on the set of relational operators, which allow expressions to be tested and compared, and yield a bool value true or false.
  
  
• We can also make decisions based on conditions which return non-bool values. Any non-zero value will be interpreted as true when a condition is tested, while zero is interpreted as false.
  
  
• The primary decision-making capability in C++ is provided by the if statement. Further flexibility is provided by the switch statement, and by the conditional operator.
  
  
• There are three basic methods provided for repeating a block of statements: the for loop, the while loop and the do-while loop. The for loop allows the loop to repeat a given number of times. The while loop allows a loop to continue as long as a specified condition returns true. Finally, do-while executes the loop at least once and allows continuation of the loop as long as a specified condition returns true.
  
  
• Any kind of loop may be nested within any other kind of loop.
  
  
• The keyword continue allows you to skip the remainder of the current iteration in a loop and go straight to the next iteration.
  
  
• The keyword break provides an immediate exit from a loop. It also provides an exit from a switch at the end of a group of case statements.