History of C++

 

C++

Compiler support

Freestanding and hosted

Language

Standard library

Standard library headers

Named requirements

Feature test macros (C++20)

Language support library

Concepts library (C++20)

Metaprogramming library (C++11)

Diagnostics library

General utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Iterators library

Ranges library (C++20)

Algorithms library

Numerics library

Localizations library

Input/output library

Filesystem library (C++17)

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Concurrency support library (C++11)

Execution support library (C++26)

Technical specifications

Symbols index

External libraries

 

C++ language

General topics
Preprocessor Comments	Keywords Escape sequences
Flow control
Conditional execution statements
if	switch
Iteration statements (loops)
for range-for (C++11)	while do-while
Jump statements
continue - break	goto - return
Functions
Function declaration
Lambda function expression
inline specifier
Dynamic exception specifications (until C++17*)
noexcept specifier (C++11)
Exceptions
throw-expression try block	handler
Namespaces
Namespace declaration	Namespace aliases
Types
Fundamental types Enumeration types Function types	Class/struct types Union types
Specifiers
const/volatile decltype (C++11) auto (C++11)	constexpr (C++11) consteval (C++20) constinit (C++20)
Storage duration specifiers
Initialization
Default-initialization Value-initialization Zero-initialization Copy-initialization Direct-initialization	Aggregate initialization List-initialization (C++11)   Constant initialization Reference initialization

Expressions
Value categories Order of evaluation	Operators Operator precedence
Alternative representations
Literals
Boolean - Integer - Floating-point
Character - String - nullptr (C++11)
User-defined (C++11)
Utilities
Attributes (C++11)
Types
typedef declaration
Type alias declaration (C++11)
Casts
Implicit conversions static_cast const_cast	Explicit conversions dynamic_cast reinterpret_cast
Memory allocation
new expression	delete expression
Classes
Class declaration Constructors this pointer	Access specifiers friend specifier
Class-specific function properties
Virtual function override specifier (C++11)   final specifier (C++11)	explicit (C++11) static
Special member functions
Default constructor Copy constructor Move constructor (C++11)	Copy assignment Move assignment (C++11) Destructor
Templates
Class template Function template	Template specialization Parameter packs (C++11)
Miscellaneous
Inline assembly	History of C++

 

Early C++

• 1979: C with Classes first implemented

1. New features: classes, member functions, derived classes, separate compilation, public and private access control, friends, type checking of function arguments, default arguments, inline functions, overloaded assignment operator, constructors, destructors, f() same as f(void), call-function and return-function (synchronization features, not in C++)
2. Libraries: the concurrent task library (not in C++)

• 1982: C with Classes reference manual published
• 1984: C84 implemented, reference manual published
• 1985: Cfront 1.0

1. New features: virtual functions, function and operator overloading, references, new and delete operators, the keyword const, scope resolution operator
2. Library additions: complex number, string (AT&T version), I/O stream

• 1985: The C++ Programming Language, 1st edition
• 1986: The "whatis?" paper documenting the remaining design goals, including multiple inheritance, exception handling, and templates.
• 1987: C++ support in GCC 1.15.3
• 1989: Cfront 2.0

1. New features: multiple inheritance, pointers to members, protected access, type-safe linkage, abstract classes, static and const-qualified member functions, class-specific new and delete
2. Library additions: I/O manipulators

• 1990: The Annotated C++ Reference Manual

This book described the language as designed, including some features that were not yet implemented. It served as the de-facto standard until the ISO.

1. New features: namespaces, exception handling, nested classes, templates

• 1991: Cfront 3.0
• 1991: The C++ Programming Language, 2nd edition

Standard C++

• 1990: ANSI C++ Committee founded
• 1991: ISO C++ Committee founded
• 1992: STL implemented in C++

C++98/03 period

• 1998: C++98 (ISO/IEC 14882:1998)

1. New features: RTTI (dynamic_cast, typeid), covariant return types, cast operators, mutable, bool, declarations in conditions, template instantiations, member templates, export
2. Library additions: locales, bitset, valarray, auto_ptr, templatized string, I/O streams, and complex numbers.
3. Based on STL: containers, algorithms, iterators, function objects

• 1998: The C++ Programming Language, 3rd edition
• 1999: Boost founded by the committee members to produce new high-quality candidate libraries for the standard.
• 2003: C++03 (ISO/IEC 14882:2003)

This was a minor revision, intended to be little more than a technical corrigendum. This revision introduces the definition of value initialization.

• 2006: Performance TR (ISO/IEC TR 18015:2006) (ISO Store) (2006 draft)

This TR discussed the costs of various C++ abstractions, provided implementation guidance, discussed use of C++ in embedded systems and introduced <hardware> interface to C's ISO/IEC TR 18037:2008 <iohw.h>.

• 2007: Library extension TR1 (ISO/IEC TR 19768:2007) (ISO store) (2005 draft).

This TR is a C++ library extension, which adds the following to the C++ standard library:

1. From Boost: reference_wrapper, Smart pointers, Member function, result_of, bind, function, Type Traits, Random, Mathematical Special Functions, tuple, array, Unordered Containers (including hash), and Regular Expressions.
2. From C99: mathematical functions from <math.h> that were new in C99, blank character class, Floating-point environment, hexfloat I/O Manipulator, fixed-size integral types, the long long type, va_copy, the snprintf() and vfscanf() families of functions, and the C99 conversion specifies for printf() and scanf() families of functions.

All of TR1 except for the special functions was included in C++11, with minor changes.

• 2010: Mathematical special functions (ISO/IEC 29124:2010) (ISO Store) (2010 draft)

This international standard is a C++ standard library extension, which adds the special functions that were part of TR1, but were not included in C++11: elliptic integrals, exponential integral, Laguerre polynomials, Legendre polynomials, Hermite polynomials, Bessel functions, Neumann functions, beta function, and Riemann zeta function. This standard was merged into C++17.

C++11 period

• 2011: C++11 (ISO/IEC 14882:2011) (ISO Store) (2012 post-publication draft).

Main Article: C++11

A large number of changes were introduced to both standardize existing practices and improve the abstractions available to the C++ programmers

• 2011: Decimal floating-point TR (ISO/IEC TR 24733:2011) (ISO Store) (2009 draft)

This TR implements the decimal floating-point types from IEEE 754-2008 Standard for Floating-Point Arithmetic: std::decimal::decimal32, std::decimal::decimal64, and std::decimal::decimal128.

• 2012: The Standard C++ Foundation founded
• 2013: The C++ Programming Language, 4th edition

C++14 period

• 2014: C++14 (ISO Store) (ANSI Store) (2014 final draft)

Main Article: C++14

Minor revision of the C++ standard

• 2015: Filesystem library TS (ISO/IEC TS 18822:2015) (ISO Store) (2014 draft)

This TS is an experimental C++ library extension that specifies a filesystem library based on boost.filesystem V3 (with some modifications and extensions). This TS was merged into C++17.

• 2015: Extensions for Parallelism TS (ISO/IEC TS 19570:2015) (ISO Store) (2015 draft)

This TS standardizes parallel and vector-parallel API for all standard library algorithms, as well as adds new algorithms such as reduce, transform_reduce, or exclusive_scan. This TS was merged into C++17.

• 2015: Extensions for Transactional Memory TS (ISO/IEC TS 19841:2015) (ISO Store) ([2015 draft)

This TS extends the C++ core language with synchronized and atomic blocks, as well as transaction-safe functions, which implement transactional memory semantics.

• 2015: Extensions for Library Fundamentals TS (ISO/IEC TS 19568:2015) (ISO Store) (2015 draft)

This TS adds several new components to the C++ standard library: optional, any, string_view, sample, search, apply, polymorphic allocators, and variable templates for type traits. This TS was merged into C++17.

• 2015: Extensions for Concepts TS (ISO/IEC TS 19217:2015) (ISO Store) (2015 draft)

This TS extends the C++ core language with concepts (named type requirements) and constraints (limits on the types allowed in template, function, and variable declarations), which aids metaprogramming and simplifies template instantiation diagnostics, see concepts. This TS was merged into C++20, with some omissions.

• 2016: Extensions for Concurrency TS (ISO/IEC TS 19571:2016) (ISO Store) (2015 draft)

This TS extends the C++ library to include several extensions to std::future, latches and barriers, and atomic smart pointers.

C++17 period

• 2017: C++17 (ISO Store) (ANSI Store) (n4659 2017-03-21 final draft)

Main Article: C++17

The major revision of the C++ standard after C++11

• 2017: Extensions for Ranges TS (ISO/IEC TS 21425:2017) (ISO Store) (2017 draft)

This TS extends the C++ library to include ranges, a new, more powerful, abstraction to replace iterator pairs, along with range views, sentinel ranges, projections for on-the-fly transformations, new iterator adaptors and algorithms. This extension finally makes it possible to sort a vector with sort(v);

• 2017: Extensions for Coroutines TS (ISO/IEC TS 22277:2017) (ISO Store) (2017 draft)

This TS extends the C++ core language and the standard library to include stackless coroutines (resumable functions). This adds the keywords co_await, co_yield, and co_return.

• 2018: Extensions for Networking TS (ISO/IEC TS 19216:2018) (ISO Store) (2017 draft)

This TS extends the C++ library to include TCP/IP networking based on boost.asio.

• 2018: Extensions for modules TS (ISO/IEC TS 21544:2018) (ISO Store) (2018 draft)

This TS extends the C++ core language to include modules. This adds the special identifiers module, import, and reintroduces the keyword export with a new meaning.

• 2018: Extensions for Parallelism version 2 TS (ISO/IEC TS 19570:2018) (ISO Store) (2018 draft)

This TS extends the C++ library to include two new execution policies (unseq and vec), additional parallel algorithms such as reduction_plus or for_loop_strided, task blocks for forking and joining parallel tasks, SIMD types and operations on those types.

C++20 period

• 2020: C++20 (ISO Store) (final draft n4860 2020-03-31)

Main Article: C++20

The major revision of the C++ standard after C++17

• 2021: Reflection TS (ISO/IEC TS 23619:2021) (ISO store) (2020 draft)

This TS extends C++ with the facilities to inspect program entities such as variables, enumerations, classes and their members, lambdas and their captures, etc.

Future development

• Experimental technical specifications
• 2026: C++ latest draft n4993 (2024-10-16)

Main Article: C++23

The next major revision of the C++ standard

See also

C documentation for History of C

External links

	A History of C++: 1979-1991
	Evolving a language in and for the real world: C++ 1991-2006
	Thriving in a crowded and changing world: C++ 2006-2020
	Standard C++ foundation
	C++ on Wikipedia
	C++ Standards Committee