1.3 How to Read This Book

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If you are a C++ programmer who wants to learn or review the concepts of templates, carefully read Part I, The Basics. Even if you're quite familiar with templates already, it may help to skim through this part quickly to familiarize yourself with the style and terminology that we use. This part also covers some of the logistical aspects of organizing your source code when it contains templates.

Depending on your preferred learning method, you may decide to absorb the many details of templates in Part II, or instead you could read about practical coding techniques in Part III (and refer back to Part II for the more subtle language issues). The latter approach is probably particularly useful if you bought this book with concrete day-to-day challenges in mind. Part IV is somewhat similar to Part III, but the emphasis is on understanding how templates can contribute to specific applications rather than design techniques. It is therefore probably best to familiarize yourself with the topics of Part III before delving into Part IV.

The appendixes contain much useful information that is often referred to in the main text. We have also tried to make them interesting in their own right.

In our experience, the best way to learn something new is to look at examples. Therefore, you'll find a lot of examples throughout the book. Some are just a few lines of code illustrating an abstract concept, whereas others are complete programs that provide a concrete application of the material. The latter kind of examples will be introduced by a C++ comment describing the file containing the program code. You can find these files at the Web site of this book at http://www.josuttis.com/tmplbook/.

Ru-Brd