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Sometimes, I want to search answers from the C++ standard by myself. Reading standards might help me get an overview of the language principle proposed.

By searching the internet, I was confused by flooding C++ forums and helper websites. They provide all kinds of PDF files for reading.

I don't know which PDF file and/or which version should I adopt.

I found several websites:

I wonder whether there is a single site where the standard is posted. Which version should I refer to when solving problems? Some says C++98, while other say C++11, and even the latest working drafts. (many drafts confusing me).

EDIT
I found a useful information from The Standard, which writes:

Except only for the final standards/reports, all C++ committee documents are freely publicly available, including all working drafts, many of which closely approximate the published standard. The January 2012 working draft contains the C++11 standard plus minor editorial changes.

The January 2012 working draft is N3337.
Hope this help you guys.

EDIT
From Wiki C++11, it writes:

The working draft most similar to the published C++11 standard is N3337, dated 12 January 2012; it has only editorial corrections from the C++11 standard.

Zachary
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3 Answers3

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2018 Update: The C++ standard is maintained on GitHub. You can find an archive of old working drafts here that goes back a few years.

The official C++11 standard INCITS/ISO/IEC 14882:2011 is available at ansi.org for $30. You can Google older standards by searching for e.g. 14882:2003 and looking for PDFs. I'm not sure if it's "legal" to download them, so be sure to feel bad about it if you do so.

Before a standard is published, the committee maintains a Working Draft of the standard document with all the revisions as they introduce them. That Working Draft is eventually voted to become a standard, after which only minor editorial changes are made before it is published as a standard.

The working drafts - and quite a few other papers - are released as a numbered series of documents by the committee and are publicly available except for the final approved draft of the standard. ISO rules keep the last revision "secret" so that people will pay for the standard and that money can be used to fund the organizational work the actual ISO does.

People who don't want to pay for the standard use the final public copy of the working draft as a reference, as it is generally identical to the standard document modulo the minor editorial changes I mentioned earlier. For C++11, that last draft is N3242 - Working Draft, Standard for Programming Language C++. The first working draft after C++11 N3337 may more correctly reflect the final standard (I'm too lazy to compare).

The current Working Draft for C++1y is N3690 - Programming Language, C++. If you're really hardcore, you can track the editor's repo of the current draft at Github.

Casey
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    I download the N3690 pdf file. It is called **Committee Draft(CD)**. Is there any difference between **Working Draft** and **Committee Draft**? – Zachary Jun 21 '13 at 03:37
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    The lasted working draft for C++11 is n3291 which is not accessible (maybe too close the final ISO version). They recommend n3337 for C++11 reference. – Zachary Jun 21 '13 at 04:09
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The official ISO standard for C++11 is ISO/IEC 14882:2011, and official ISO standard for C++03 is ISO/IEC 14882:2003. You usually need to pay to get a copy of these (and to the best of my knowledge that's the only legal way to do so), and these are the official documents.

C++98 is an older version of the language that was superseded in 2003 with C++03, which was mostly minor bug fixes and adjustments to the document. C++11 is the newest C++ standard and was released in 2011. Compiler support is still in-progress. The drafts that you're referring to are draft versions of the standards that are periodically released, which may differ from the final published version. Working papers are mostly proposals for the documents that are considered by the ISO group, but which are not official.

Hope this helps!

templatetypedef
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Well, you can buy the official standard from ISO (as you've linked). The latest working drafts are sufficient for my purposes (I'm not implementing compilers, linkers, libraries or lexers).

If you're doing serious professional work with the language it's worth paying for. If you're looking to understand the specific technical details of the language, use one of the drafts.

Brian Cain
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