C++
General-purpose programming language / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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C++ (/ˈsiː plʌs plʌs/, pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programming language, it has since expanded significantly over time; modern C++ currently has object-oriented, generic, and functional features, in addition to facilities for low-level memory manipulation. It is almost always implemented as a compiled language, and many vendors provide C++ compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, LLVM, Microsoft, Intel, Embarcadero, Oracle, and IBM.[13]
![]() Logo endorsed by the C++ standards committee | |
Paradigms | Multi-paradigm: procedural, imperative, functional, object-oriented, generic, modular |
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Family | C |
Designed by | Bjarne Stroustrup |
Developer | ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical Committee 1) / SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) / WG 21 (Working Group 21) |
First appeared | 1985; 38 years ago (1985) |
Stable release | |
Preview release | |
Typing discipline | Static, strong, nominative, partially inferred |
OS | Cross-platform |
Filename extensions | .C, .cc, .cpp, .cxx, .c++, .h, .H, .hh, .hpp, .hxx, .h++ |
Website | isocpp |
Major implementations | |
GCC, LLVM Clang, Microsoft Visual C++, Embarcadero C++Builder, Intel C++ Compiler, IBM XL C++, EDG | |
Influenced by | |
Ada, ALGOL 68,[1] BCPL,[2] C, CLU,[1] F#,[3][note 1] ML, Mesa,[1] Modula-2,[1] Simula, Smalltalk[1] | |
Influenced | |
Ada 95, C#,[4] C99, Carbon, Chapel,[5] Clojure,[6] D, Java,[7] JS++,[8] Lua,[9] Nim,[10] Objective-C++, Perl, PHP, Python,[11] Rust,[12] Seed7 | |
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C++ was designed with systems programming and embedded, resource-constrained software and large systems in mind, with performance, efficiency, and flexibility of use as its design highlights.[14] C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications,[14] including desktop applications, video games, servers (e.g. e-commerce, web search, or databases), and performance-critical applications (e.g. telephone switches or space probes).[15]
C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2020 as ISO/IEC 14882:2020 (informally known as C++20).[16] The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by the C++03, C++11, C++14, and C++17 standards. The current C++20 standard supersedes these with new features and an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979 as an extension of the C language; he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C that also provided high-level features for program organization.[17] Since 2012, C++ has been on a three-year release schedule[18] with C++23 as the next planned standard.[19]