Rating: 
Summary: Great book but not for Beginners
Review: Before tackling this book I would suggest having a basic understanding of the C++ Programming Language. The book is a good book to get those who have just completed something like "The Beginners Guide to C++" into more advanced concepts of the language.I do recomend the book to my friends and they have benifited from it as much as I have.
Rating: 
Summary: Please...DO NOT get this book wrong.
Review: Don't get this book wrong. This is not a book that teach about C++ language or a reference. This is a book about Object-Oriented Programming in C++ language. This means you will need to know C++ well enough before read it. The contents of this book is fine, cover a lot of OOP ideas, and could be use as a good OOP tutorial, since it provided a way of think in OOP. For readers who said this book is imcomplete about function declarations, please make sure that you really read this one, not just skimmed pass it. The function of page 7 is actually the declaration, he defined it later on page 9. And the "hello world" compiled and ran fine with my VC++ compiler, as well as the GNU compiler on Linux. So, please check this carefully. Thank you.
Rating: 
Summary: an odd approach to a complex topic
Review: I bought this book after reading Pohl's "C++ for C programmers" and found it to simply be a beefed up version of the same book without the part about the C kernel language. Pohl has an odd way of approaching the complex topic of C++ and writes in a manner which is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the "C++ for Dummies" type books (I read & liked C++ for dummies). I was forced to buy and read other books on the same subject in order to fully appreciate the language, but this book is not without its merits.
Rating:
Summary: an odd approach to a complex topic
Review: I bought this book after reading Pohl's "C++ for C programmers" and found it to simply be a beefed up version of the same book without the part about the C kernel language. Pohl has an odd way of approaching the complex topic of C++ and writes in a manner which is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the "C++ for Dummies" type books (I read & liked C++ for dummies). I was forced to buy and read other books on the same subject in order to fully appreciate the language, but this book is not without its merits.
Rating:
Summary: Very odd code examples, with many mistakes
Review: I did not buy this book. I borrowed it from my co-worker. After reading upon to page 7, I feel like this is a very odd book on C++. I am a intermediate C++ programmer. On page 4, hello.cpp, it did not compile on my Visual C++ compile. I do not see any merits of using that weird style to code simple "hello world". On page 7, the author declared a member function void assign (const char *st), but he never defined it! Yet, he gave the output. How come this is a 2nd edition? Strange.
Rating: 
Summary: Not worth the time or money
Review: I was required to buy this book for a class. I was very disappointed by it from the very first chapter. The author throws up some really convoluted code, and then barely explains what he is doing. Rather than presenting a problem and suggesting how to use C++ to solve it, the code itself is presented as the problem to be solved ,as in, "try to figure out what I was thinking when I wrote these lines of code". Even the typical "Hello World" program was much more complicated than necessary, giving the impression that C++ I/O is more difficult than it really is. I ended up buying other books to complete the course, and would not recommend this book to anyone trying to learn object oriented program concepts.
Rating: 
Summary: Not an OOP book by any means
Review: I would give this book 5 Stars if its title is changed to "Programming Using C++". Read on to find out why. Short Summary: The title of this book is way off on what the text covers; you will NOT learn any OOP from this book. If you are looking to learn about OOP than look elsewhere. If you already know some C++ (or know very well some other language) and want to learn C++, you will find this book very promising. Long Summary: I don't know why this book was given such a title -- there is nothing about OOP in the text (except for one chapter). However, it does a VERY good job on teaching C++ programming. There are 12 chapters in the book and 5 appendixes (517 pages in all). They are: 1) Why OOP in C++?, 2) Native Types and Statements, 3) Functions and Pointers, 4) Implementing ADTs in the Base Language, 5) Data Hiding and Member Functions, 6) Object Creation and Destruction, 7) Ad Hoc Polymorphism, 8) Visitation: Iterators and Containers, 9) Templates, Generic Programming, and STL, 10) Inheritance, 11 Exceptions, 12) OOP Using C++, A) ASCII Character Codes, B) Operator Precedence and Associativity, C) Language Guide, D) Input/Output, E) STL and String Libraries. Well, as you can see from the title of the chapters, ONLY chapter 12 talks about OOP and it is only 17 pages longs. Every other chapter is about the C++ language and they NEVER cover OOP by any means. So don't get this book in the hope of learning OOP, but get it if you want to learn C++ and I found it very healthy in covering C++. Finally, for those reviewers who are claiming that this is an OOP book, I see them as mixing C++ and OOP as being equal -- it is not. You can learn about OOP with (almost) any language -- OOP has nothing to do with C++ and this book does NOT teach you OOP.
Rating:
Summary: Not an OOP book by any means
Review: I would give this book 5 Stars if its title is changed to "Programming Using C++". Read on to find out why. Short Summary: The title of this book is way off on what the text covers; you will NOT learn any OOP from this book. If you are looking to learn about OOP than look elsewhere. If you already know some C++ (or know very well some other language) and want to learn C++, you will find this book very promising. Long Summary: I don't know why this book was given such a title -- there is nothing about OOP in the text (except for one chapter). However, it does a VERY good job on teaching C++ programming. There are 12 chapters in the book and 5 appendixes (517 pages in all). They are: 1) Why OOP in C++?, 2) Native Types and Statements, 3) Functions and Pointers, 4) Implementing ADTs in the Base Language, 5) Data Hiding and Member Functions, 6) Object Creation and Destruction, 7) Ad Hoc Polymorphism, 8) Visitation: Iterators and Containers, 9) Templates, Generic Programming, and STL, 10) Inheritance, 11 Exceptions, 12) OOP Using C++, A) ASCII Character Codes, B) Operator Precedence and Associativity, C) Language Guide, D) Input/Output, E) STL and String Libraries. Well, as you can see from the title of the chapters, ONLY chapter 12 talks about OOP and it is only 17 pages longs. Every other chapter is about the C++ language and they NEVER cover OOP by any means. So don't get this book in the hope of learning OOP, but get it if you want to learn C++ and I found it very healthy in covering C++. Finally, for those reviewers who are claiming that this is an OOP book, I see them as mixing C++ and OOP as being equal -- it is not. You can learn about OOP with (almost) any language -- OOP has nothing to do with C++ and this book does NOT teach you OOP.
Rating:
Summary: Book not for beginners
Review: If you already know some C++ this is one of the best books available.
Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: It's unfortunate that this book got so many bad reviews. I have an earlier version (copyright 1993). This book is not for beginners and it should not be used as an itroductory text for C++ in college or by self-teachers. This book is for computer scientists who have a working knowledge of how a binary program is implemented and executed at the machine level. Assuming this knowledge, it goes on to explain the semantics of scoping, parameter passing, casting conversions, and creation and deletion of objects - as well as other important concepts. And, furthermore, it explains these semantics tersely. It wouldn't hurt to have had an introductory course in C++ before you buy this book. This book concisely explains things like when and why you should or shouldn't create a copy constructor; whether the default constructor or one of the overloaded constructors is called and why; when and why you should or shouldn't declare a member function const; when and why you need to create cast operators in your class and when and why they are called. For example, there are many instances when one of YOUR constructors or cast operators is implicitly called by the compiler generated code and not by YOUR code. If you don't know when these instances occur then you simply do not understand how your own code works. Whether you learn these concepts from this book or another is irrelevant - if you don't understand them you'll never be able to implement a non trivial abstract data type that others would be willing to pay money for.
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