Before the standad

1985-10
Cfront 1.0
1985-10
The C++ Programming Language 1st ed. (TC++PL)
1987-02
Cfront 1.2
1989-06
Cfront 2.0
1990-05
The Annotated C++ Reference Manual (ARM)
1991-06
The C++ Programming Language 2nd ed. (TC++PL2)
1991-10
Cfront 3.0

Standard Revisions

Year C++ Standard Informal name
1998 ISO/IEC 14882:1998[19] C++98
2003 ISO/IEC 14882:2003[18] C++03
2007 ISO/IEC TR 19768:2007[17] C++TR1
2011 ISO/IEC 14882:2011[16] C++11 (C++0x)
2014 ISO/IEC 14882:2014(E) C++14 (C++1y)
2017   C++17 (C++1z)

Relevant Language Versions

Roughly corresponding to the editions of TC++PL

1985
Cfront 1.0 / TC++PL
(initial release)
1991
ARM (includes Cfront 2 changes)
(preliminar standard) refinement: TC++PL2
1998
C++98 / TC++PL3
(final standard) refinement: C++03
2011
C++11 / TC++PL4
(standard revision) refinement: C++14

Major features per revision

TC++PL / Cfront 1.0

  • (extensions to K&R C)
  • function prototypes
  • single precision float
  • function overloading
  • operator overloading
  • inline functions
  • const
  • reference types
  • new & delete operators
  • classes
  • class / enum types
  • void*
  • anonimous functions
  • Stream I/O libraries

Cfront 2.0

  • multiple inheritance
  • type-safe linkage
  • abstract classes
  • static member functions
  • const member functions
  • protected members (Cfront 1.2)
  • generalized initializers, base and member initializers
  • overloading ->
  • pointers tomembers (Cfront 1.2)

ARM

  • templates
  • exception handling
  • nested classes
  • independent prefix/postfix ++ overloading
  • initialization of local static arrays allowed
  • volatile
  • (implemented in Cfront 3.0 except for exceptions)

TC++PL2

  • overload considered anachronism
  • new deleted can be overloaded
  • extern linkage specifications

C++98

  • __cplusplus = 199711L
  • covariant return types (overriding relaxation)
  • namespaces
  • template improvements, partial specialization, member templates, default arguments
  • use of members ahead of declaration
  • for statement initializers (scope of controlled variables)
  • run time type identification
  • Standard Library

C++03

  • (standard bug fixes)
  • Standard Library:
    • contiguous storage requirement for vector

C++TR1 (Library Extensions)

  • Standard Library: (std::tr1 namespace) (mostly from Boost)
    • reference wrapper
    • smart pointers (auto_ptr)
    • function objects
    • metaprogramming type traits
    • random number generation
    • mathematical special functions
    • tuple types
    • fixed-size array
    • hash tables
    • regular expressions

C++11

  • __cplusplus = 201103L
  • move constructors, Rvalue references
  • constexpr
  • extern template
  • initializer lists
  • uniform initialization syntax type var{…};
  • auto type inference
  • range for loops
  • lambda expressions
  • new function declaration with trailing return type -> …
  • object construction delegation
  • explicit override and final
  • nullptr
  • enum class (strongly type enumerations)
  • multiple right angle closing brackets »
  • explicit
  • template aliases
  • unrestricted unions
  • variadic templates
  • new string literals u8””, u”” …
  • user-defined literals
  • multithreading memory model, thread-local storeage, …
  • default and delete member functions
  • long long int
  • static_assert
  • sizeof class member
  • alignof, alignas

  • attributes [[xxx]]

  • Standard Library:
    • threading facilites
    • tuple types
    • hash tables
    • regular expressions
    • smart pointers (unique_ptr to replace auto_ptr; shared_ptr; weak_ptr; make_unique, make_shared)
    • extensible randon numbers
    • wrapper reference
    • polymorphic function wrappers
    • type traits for metaprogramming

C++14

  • __cplusplus = 201402L
  • auto function return type deduction
  • alternate type deduction on declaration
  • relaxed constexpr restrictions
  • variable templates
  • aggregate member initialization
  • binary literals
  • digit separators
  • generic lambdas
  • lambda captures expressions

  • [[deprecated]] attribute

  • Standard Library:
    • shared mutexes and locking
    • standard user-defined literals