ok sorry for hogging the forum but i want to know are there any good books that focus on exercises or projects for you to practice your C++? Im not proficient but not a newcomer either to the language. A book that has solutions to such exercises as well would be excellent. I think the "learn how to program" books are really good but i feel that most let you down in terms of actually applying your new found skills to interesting problems. thanks

Just make something up. Try to use as many features of the language as possible while you are doing it.

For instance when I finished reading Sam''s Teach Yourself C++ in 21 days I started working on a class that implements all the matrix and vector math needed for transformations. Sure I can download a better matrix library or just use Direct X, but this way I am really learning both the math and the advanced features of C++.

If your pretty good in C++, you may want to check out topcoder.com, they have practice rooms.

Heh, here''s the first project from my comp sci 2 class.

Write a program that parses strings into individual words, using anything besides an alphanumeric character as a delimiter, and prints the results to the screen. The only functions allowed are those from string.h.

ie. "The cat''s in the cradle. Some-other-junk.
The
cat
s
in
the
cradle
some
other
junk

Was kinda fun, but the most interesting thing is the professor wants everything bullet proof. If he can find a way to crash it, or make it generate incorrect ouput, you lose credit.




[My site|SGI STL|Bjarne FAQ|C++ FAQ Lite|MSDN|Jargon]
Ripped off from various people

Just as one more note to make, when I started with programming, the first thing I did (of any consequence anyway) was creating file hacks for existing games. Specifically, I play a lot of VGA Planets and when I started programming, I found the file formats for all of the files in the game and wrote a program which allows me to edit the unit statistics. I''ve also written a random map generator and a plug-in mod for the game since then. The point is that if you work on an existing game you don''t have to create the whole infrastructure yourself, but neither are you making waste-of-my-time console i/o programs (which, BTW was all I could do after I read SAMS teach yourself C++ in 12 Easy Lessons). Just a thought.