1.1 What You Should Know Before Reading This Book

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To get the most from this book you should already know C++: We describe the details of a particular language feature, not the fundamentals of the language itself. You should be familiar with the concepts of classes and inheritance, and you should be able to write C++ programs using components such as IOstreams and containers from the C++ standard library. In addition, we review more subtle issues as the need arises, even when such issues aren't directly related to templates. This ensures that the text is accessible to experts and intermediate programmers alike.

We deal mostly with the C++ language as standardized in 1998 (see [Standard98]), plus the clarifications provided by the C++ Standardization Committee in its first technical corrigendum (see [Standard02]). If you feel your understanding of the basics of C++ is rusty or out-of-date, we recommend [StroustrupC++PL], [JosuttisOOP], and [JosuttisStdLib] to refresh your knowledge. These books are excellent introductions to the modern language and its standard library. Additional publications are listed in Appendix B.3.5.

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