According to Schildt, “If you want a comprehensive reference guide to both Turbo C and Turbo C++, this book is for you. This book is for both beginning programmers and seasoned pros” (p. 1). The book is long and contains a lot of information, but it has serious flaws as both a reference manual and a book for beginners.

The book’s 33 chapters and four appendices are divided into five parts. Parts 1 through 3 deal with C, while Parts 4 and 5 deal with C++. The treatment of C and C++ is so separate that the book can be viewed as two books in one. Large portions of the chapters on the editor and programming environment are duplicated verbatim in both halves of the book.

The 11 chapters of Part 1 describe the C language. The first chapter provides perspective on C in the wider spectrum of programming languages and concepts, the next 7 chapters describe standard ANSI C syntax and semantics, and the final 3 chapters describe features specific to Turbo C. The 3 chapters of Part 2 describe the Turbo C programming environment, the text editor, and the compiler and linker.

Part 3, which constitutes roughly a third of the book, describes Turbo C library functions. Separate chapters address I/O, character and string manipulation, mathematical operations, time calls, memory allocation, directory operations, process control, and graphics. A short section is provided for each function, containing the function interface prototype, a description of the function, and an example of code containing the function. This part of the book contains the most valuable reference material, and it is generally well presented. The only shortcoming is that no summary is provided, so a user must browse through an entire chapter to learn which functions are available and what purpose they serve.

The 6 chapters of Part 4 describe C++ syntax and semantics. The first chapter introduces the basic concepts of C++ and the philosophy of object-oriented design. Separate chapters are then dedicated to classes, overloading, inheritance and polymorphism, and I/O. The 3 chapters of Part 5 describe the C++ development environment, the editor, and the command-line compiler. As noted above, large portions of the text and figures of these chapters are copied directly from Part 2, for no clear reason.

Appendices A and B describe the C++ and C debuggers; again, large portions of text are duplicated verbatim. Appendix C describes assembly language interfacing, and Appendix D describes makefiles and program maintenance.

The book has significant faults. The most serious is that the index is awful. For example, it contains no list of symbols; thus it has no entries for *, &, ++, !, or ==, all of which are familiar to C programmers. In spot checking, I found that entries are missing for “const,” “constant,” “casting,” “precedence,” “operator precedence,” “strings,” “argv,” and “argc.” The entries for “conversion,” “overloading,” and “parameters” refer to inappropriate pages. A good index is essential to a reference book. This book lacks that essential ingredient.

Part 1, which describes C, and Part 4, which describes C++, are not suitable for beginners because concepts are presented in a non-tutorial, reference-manual style. On the other hand, experienced C and C++ programmers will find much of the material unnecessary, wordy, and lacking depth and detail. Many excellent introductory and reference texts on C and C++ exist. This book, although it claims to be suitable for both beginning and experienced programmers, is likely to frustrate rather than satisfy.