Common Problems with C++

After watching students who have used C++ in at least five courses (COM 1100, 1101, 1201, 1204, and 1205) continue to struggle to write even simple programs in C++, I thought it would be useful, for myself as well as for the students, to create a list of the more common problems they are having. This list will grow, unfortunately.

• Type checking in C++

  (See Gandhi on western civilization.)

• Storage Management

  • Dangling pointers
    • Temporary objects are temporary.
    • Automatic objects are temporary too.
    • Even dynamic objects are sort of temporary.

• Link Errors

  (Under Unix, the linker is called ld.)
  • Undefined symbols.
  • Undefined copy constructors in Gnu C++.
  • Multiply defined symbols.

Last updated 2 March 1998.