Anthony J. Dos Reis. C and C++ Under the Hood: 2nd Edition

Independently published (July 25, 2021), 290 pages
ISBN-13: ‎979-8514952076This second edition of the the highly acclaimed first edition provides the reader with an invaluable insight into C and C++ in particular and programming languages in general. Although the title of the book, C and C++ Under the Hood, suggests that the book has a narrow scope, in fact, just the opposite is true: It is an introduction to assembly language, programming language design, object-oriented programming, assemblers, compilers, interpreters, linkers, computer architecture, and system programming. You will learn what happens at the machine level corresponding to the features, constructs, operations, and extensions of the C and C++ programming languages. For example, you will learn:
— what an object in memory looks like and how its functions are called and its data accessed
— why dynamic local variables have no default values but global variables do
— how virtual functions are implemented
— what happens during a call by reference
— what is the difference between static functions and ordinary functions
— some interesting parameter-passing extensions (pass by value-result, pass by name)
— what happens when a recursive function is executed
— what startup code is and what is its function
— how two separately-compiled modules are linked together
— what is in object and executable files
— how to write an assembler and a linker
— how to write a machine language interpreter
The book is accompanied by an easy-to-use but powerful assembler, linker, interpreter, and debugger program available for the Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and Raspberry Pi systems. Included in the book are a number of well-defined system pro-gramming projects that support the material covered. This second edition incorporates a number of improvements:
— The text includes a new chapter on the microlevel accompanied by supporting software so readers can write and experiment with their own microcode. In addition, the software package contains a second new chapter in pdf form on virtual memory.
— The software package now includes slides (in both pdf and docx format) for the textbook.
— The directions and shell programs for the projects in the system programming chapter have been improved.
— The instruction set has been substantially expanded and improved.
— The text now uses the more standard gcc assembly language format and directives. The software supports both the gcc format and the format and directives used in the first edition.