This article is from the alt.comp.lang.learn.c-c++ Frequently Asked Questions. Compiled by Sunil Rao sunil.rao@ic.ac.uk.
First of all, C and C++ are different languages. C was created by Dennis Ritchie as an efficient language for systems programming. Bjarne Stroustrup then extended C by adding features to support object-oriented programming. C++ can be considered to be a superset of C, but there are real differences between them.
It can usually (though not always) be assumed that anybody who talks about "C/C++" as one language is no expert - this extends to book authors too. It is normally unclear whether somebody is referring to "C OR C++" or "C AND C++" when using this expression, so it is probably best avoided.
 
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