4 General principles [intro]

[lex] through [cpp] describe the C++ programming language.

That description includes detailed syntactic specifications in a form described in [syntax].

For convenience, [gram] repeats all such syntactic specifications.

[support] through [thread] and [depr] (the library clauses) describe the C++ standard library.

That description includes detailed descriptions of the entities and macros that constitute the library, in a form described in [library].

[implimits] recommends lower bounds on the capacity of conforming implementations.

[diff] summarizes the evolution of C++ since its first published description, and explains in detail the differences between C++ and C.

Certain features of C++ exist solely for compatibility purposes; [depr] describes those features.

Throughout this document, each example is introduced by “[Example: ” and terminated by “ — end example]”.

Each note is introduced by “[Note: ” or “[Note n to entry: ” and terminated by “ — end note]”.

Examples and notes may be nested.