C++ Super Review

Rating:
Summary: Okay for quick brush up on the basics
Review: I thought the book was okay for a quick review but it is certainly not "All you need to know." I bought the book to quickly brush up on the basics as I was going to take a test from a potential employer. For the most part the code seemed correct, though brief. However, there is a serious error in the List example, specifically the overloading of operator =. The code itself works but it is more suited to a copy constructor than operator=. The authors forget that assigning can occur to a list that is already initialized and they make no provision for ensuring that the old list is destroyed. Using this code will result in a memory leak. The authors simply set the head pointer using operator new to create a new node and then go about copying the passed-in list. Old information is immediately lost.

Rating:
Summary: Okay for quick brush up on the basics
Review: I thought the book was okay for a quick review but it is certainly not "All you need to know." I bought the book to quickly brush up on the basics as I was going to take a test from a potential employer. For the most part the code seemed correct, though brief. However, there is a serious error in the List example, specifically the overloading of operator =. The code itself works but it is more suited to a copy constructor than operator=. The authors forget that assigning can occur to a list that is already initialized and they make no provision for ensuring that the old list is destroyed. Using this code will result in a memory leak. The authors simply set the head pointer using operator new to create a new node and then go about copying the passed-in list. Old information is immediately lost.