Generalities

This C++ course is based on the GNU C++ compiler v. 4.0 and above running under the Unix operating system. Essential Unix tools, beside the compiler, are: make, tar, gzip/gunzip. As debuggers, we use gdb with the ddd front-end, and valgrind.

By ``computer'', here, we do not mean a theoretical computer science model such as a Turing machine, but a real, physical desktop or laptop computer. Although any architecture capable of running a Unix and the above-mentioned tools will do, the actual C++ course is given on desktop PCs with a 32 bit Intel processor running a mainstream Linux distribution.