C++11 was published by ISO/IEC in 2011. Bjarne Stroustrup, the creator of C++, expressed his vision for the future of the language—the main goals were to make C++ easier to learn, improve library-building capabilities and increase compatibility with the C programming language. C++11 extended the C++ Standard Library and added several features and enhancements to improve performance and security. The three compilers we use in this book

• Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition (Microsoft Windows)

• GNU C++ (Linux)

• Clang/LLVM in Xcode (Mac OS X)

have implemented most C++11 features.

The current C++ standard, C++14, was published by ISO/IEC in 2014. It added several language features and C++ Standard Library enhancements, and fixed bugs from C++11. Throughout this book, we cover features of C++11 and C++14 as appropriate for a book at this level. For a list of C++11 and C++14 features and the compilers that support them, visit

http://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support

The next version of the C++ standard, C++17, is currently under development. For a list of proposed features, see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C%2B%2B17