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++ is an enhanced version of the C language. C++ includes
everything that is part of C and adds support for object-oriented
programming(OOP). In addition, C++ also contains many improvements
and features that make it a "better C", independent of object oriented
programming. C++ is actually an extendible language since we can
define new types in such a way that they act just like the predefined
types which are part of the standard language.
If you just use C++ as a better C, you will not be using all of its power. Like any quality tool, C++ must be used the way it was designed to be used to exploit its richness. Some of the new features include encapsulation, inline function calls, overloading operators,inheritance and polymorphism, and templates.
The first implementation of C++ was developed in the eighties at the AT&T Bell Labs, where the Unix operating system was created.
C++ was originally a `pre-compiler', similar to the preprocessor of C, which converted special instructions in its source code to plain C. This code was then compiled by a normal C compiler. The `pre-code', which was read by the C++ pre-compiler, would then be converted to a C source file, which was compiled and linked.
