C++

C++
C++
	Logo endorsed by the C++ standards committee
Paradigms	Multi-paradigm: procedural, imperative, functional, object-oriented, generic, modular, reflective, Design by contract
Family	C
Designed by	Bjarne Stroustrup
Developer	ISO/IEC JTC 1 (Joint Technical Committee 1) / SC 22 (Subcommittee 22) / WG 21 (Working Group 21)
First appeared	1985
Stable release	C++23 (ISO/IEC 14882:2024) / 19 October 2024
Preview release	C++26 (N5032) / 15 December 2025
Typing discipline	Static, strong, nominative, partially inferred
OS	Cross-platform
Filename extensions	.C, .cc, .cpp, .cxx, .c++, .h, .H, .hh, .hpp, .hxx, .h++ .cppm, .ixx
Website	isocpp.org
Major implementations
	GCC, LLVM Clang, Microsoft Visual C++, Embarcadero C++Builder, Intel C++ Compiler, IBM XL C++, EDG
Influenced by
	Ada, ALGOL 68, BCPL, C, CLU, F#, ML, Mesa, Modula-2, Simula, Smalltalk
Influenced
	Ada 95, C#, C99, Carbon, Chapel, Clojure, D, Java, JS++, Lua, Nim, Objective-C++, Perl, PHP, Python, Rust
	C++ Programming at Wikibooks;

C++ is a high-level, general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup. First released in 1985 as an extension of the C programming language, adding object-oriented (OOP) functionality and later expanding significantly with the addition of functional programming features. It supports low-level memory manipulation for systems like microcomputers and has been used for the creation and maintenance of Microsoft Windows. C++ has also added support for generic programming through the use of templates. It is usually implemented as a compiled language, and many vendors provide C++ compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, LLVM, Microsoft, Intel, Embarcadero, Oracle, and IBM.

C++ was designed with systems programming and embedded, resource-constrained software and large systems in mind, with performance, efficiency, and flexibility of use as its design highlights. C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications, including desktop applications, video games, servers (e.g., e-commerce, web search, or databases), and performance-critical applications (e.g., telephone switches or space probes).

C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in October 2024 as ISO/IEC 14882:2024 (informally known as C++23). The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by the C++03, C++11, C++14, C++17, and C++20 standards. The next C++23 standard superseded these with new features and an enlarged standard library. Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979 as an extension of the C language; he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C that also provided high-level features for program organization. Since 2012, C++ has been on a three-year release schedule with C++29 as the next planned standard.