Wrox Press C++ Tutorial

Chapter 4 - Introducing Structure Into Your Programs

Up to now we haven't really been able to structure our program code in a modular fashion, since we've only been able to construct a program as a single function, main(). We have, however, been using library functions of various kinds. Whenever you write a C++ program, you should have a modular structure in mind from the outset and, as we shall see, a good understanding of how to implement functions is essential to object-oriented programming in C++. In this chapter, you'll learn:

• How to declare and write your own C++ functions
  
  
• What function arguments are, and how they are defined and used
  
  
• How arrays can be passed to and from a function
  
  
• What pass-by-value means
  
  
• How to pass pointers to functions
  
  
• How to use references as function arguments, and what pass-by-reference means
  
  
• How the const modifier affects function arguments
  
  
• How to return values from a function
  
  
• What recursion is and how it can be used

There's quite a lot to structuring your C++ programs, so to avoid indigestion, we won't try to swallow the whole thing in one gulp. Once we've chewed over and gotten the full flavor of the morsels listed above, we'll move on to the next chapter, where we shall get further into the meat of the topic.