C++ (/ˌsiːˌplʌsˈplʌs/ "see plus plus") is a general-purpose programming language. It has imperative, object-oriented and generic programming features, while also providing facilities for low-level memory manipulation.
It was designed with a bias toward system programming and embedded, resource-constrained and large systems, with performance, efficiency and flexibility of use as its design highlights.[7] C++ has also been found useful in many other contexts, with key strengths being software infrastructure and resource-constrained applications,[7] including desktop applications, servers (e.g. e-commerce, Web search or SQL servers), and performance-critical applications (e.g. telephone switches or space probes).[8]  C++ is a compiled language, with implementations of it available on many platforms.  Many vendors provide C++ compilers, including the Free Software Foundation, Microsoft, Intel, and IBM.
C++ is standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), with the latest standard version ratified and published by ISO in December 2017 as ISO/IEC 14882:2017 (informally known as C++17).[9] The C++ programming language was initially standardized in 1998 as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which was then amended by the C++03, C++11 and C++14 standards. The current C++17 standard supersedes these with new features and an enlarged standard library.  Before the initial standardization in 1998, C++ was developed by Bjarne Stroustrup at Bell Labs since 1979, as an extension of the C language as he wanted an efficient and flexible language similar to C, which also provided high-level features for program organization.[10] C++20 is the next planned standard thereafter, keeping with the current streak of a new version every three years[11].
History

In 1979, Bjarne Stroustrup, a Danish computer scientist, began work on "C with Classes", the predecessor to C++.[12] The motivation for creating a new language originated from Stroustrup's experience in programming for his Ph.D. thesis. Stroustrup found that Simula had features that were very helpful for large software development, but the language was too slow for practical use, while BCPL was fast but too low-level to be suitable for large software development. When Stroustrup started working in AT&T Bell Labs, he had the problem of analyzing the UNIX kernel with respect to distributed computing. Remembering his Ph.D. experience, Stroustrup set out to enhance the C language with Simula-like features.[13] C was chosen because it was general-purpose, fast, portable and widely used. As well as C and Simula's influences, other languages also influenced C++, including ALGOL 68, Ada, CLU and ML.
Initially, Stroustrup's "C with Classes" added features to the C compiler, Cpre, including classes, derived classes, strong typing, inlining and default arguments.[14]
In 1983, "C with Classes" was renamed to "C++" (++ being the increment operator in C), adding new features that included virtual functions, function name and operator overloading, references, constants, type-safe free-store memory allocation (new/delete), improved type checking, and BCPL style single-line comments with two forward slashes (//).  Furthermore, it included the development of a standalone compiler for C++, Cfront.
In 1985, the first edition of The C++ Programming Language was released, which became the definitive reference for the language, as there was not yet an official standard.[15] The first commercial implementation of C++ was released in October of the same year.[12]
In 1989, C++ 2.0 was released, followed by the updated second edition of The C++ Programming Language in 1991.[16] New features in 2.0 included multiple inheritance, abstract classes, static member functions, const member functions, and protected members. In 1990, The Annotated C++ Reference Manual was published. This work became the basis for the future standard. Later feature additions included templates, exceptions, namespaces, new casts, and a boolean type.
After the 2.0 update, C++ evolved relatively slowly until, in 2011, the C++11 standard was released, adding numerous new features, enlarging the standard library further, and providing more facilities to C++ programmers. After a minor C++14 update released in December 2014, various new additions were introduced in C++17, and further changes planned for 2020.[17]
As of 2017, C++ remains the third most popular programming language, behind Java and C.[18][19]
On January 3, 2018, Stroustrup was announced as the 2018 winner of the Charles Stark Draper Prize for Engineering, "for conceptualizing and developing the C++ programming language".[20]
Etymology
According to Stroustrup: "the name signifies the evolutionary nature of the changes from C".[21] This name is credited to Rick Mascitti (mid-1983)[14] and was first used in December 1983. When Mascitti was questioned informally in 1992 about the naming, he indicated that it was given in a tongue-in-cheek spirit. The name comes from C's ++ operator (which increments the value of a variable) and a common naming convention of using "+" to indicate an enhanced computer program.
During C++'s development period, the language had been referred to as "new C" and "C with Classes"[14][22] before acquiring its final name.
Philosophy
Throughout C++'s life, its development and evolution has been guided by a set of principles:[13]
It must be driven by actual problems and its features should be immediately useful in real world programs.
Every feature should be implementable (with a reasonably obvious way to do so).
Programmers should be free to pick their own programming style, and that style should be fully supported by C++.
Allowing a useful feature is more important than preventing every possible misuse of C++.
It should provide facilities for organising programs into separate, well-defined parts, and provide facilities for combining separately developed parts.
No implicit violations of the type system (but allow explicit violations; that is, those explicitly requested by the programmer).
User-created types need to have the same support and performance as built-in types.
Unused features should not negatively impact created executables (e.g. in lower performance).
There should be no language beneath C++ (except assembly language).
C++ should work alongside other existing programming languages, rather than fostering its own separate and incompatible programming environment.
If the programmer's intent is unknown, allow the programmer to specify it by providing manual control.
Standardization

C++ is standardized by an ISO working group known as JTC1/SC22/WG21. So far, it has published five revisions of the C++ standard and is currently working on the next revision, C++20.
In 1998, the ISO working group standardized C++ for the first time as ISO/IEC 14882:1998, which is informally known as C++98. In 2003, it published a new version of the C++ standard called ISO/IEC 14882:2003, which fixed problems identified in C++98.
The next major revision of the standard was informally referred to as "C++0x", but it was not released until 2011.[27] C++11 (14882:2011) included many additions to both the core language and the standard library.[25]
In 2014, C++14 (also known as C++1y) was released as a small extension to C++11, featuring mainly bug fixes and small improvements.[28]  The Draft International Standard ballot procedures completed in mid-August 2014.[29]
After C++14, a major revision C++17, informally known as C++1z, was completed by the ISO C++ Committee in mid July 2017 and was approved and published in December 2017.[30]
As part of the standardization process, ISO also publishes technical reports and specifications:
ISO/IEC TR 18015:2006[31] on the use of C++ in embedded systems and on performance implications of C++ language and library features,
ISO/IEC TR 19768:2007[32] (also known as the C++ Technical Report 1) on library extensions mostly integrated into C++11,
ISO/IEC TR 29124:2010[33] on special mathematical functions,
ISO/IEC TR 24733:2011[34] on decimal floating point arithmetic,
ISO/IEC TS 18822:2015[35] on the standard filesystem library,
ISO/IEC TS 19570:2015[36] on parallel versions of the standard library algorithms,
ISO/IEC TS 19841:2015[37] on software transactional memory,
ISO/IEC TS 19568:2015[38] on a new set of library extensions, some of which are already integrated into C++17,
ISO/IEC TS 19217:2015[39] on the C++ concepts
More technical specifications are in development and pending approval, including concurrency library extensions, a networking standard library, ranges, and modules.[40]
Language
The C++ language has two main components: a direct mapping of hardware features provided primarily by the C subset, and zero-overhead abstractions based on those mappings. Stroustrup describes C++ as "a light-weight abstraction programming language [designed] for building and using efficient and elegant abstractions";[7] and "offering both hardware access and abstraction is the basis of C++. Doing it efficiently is what distinguishes it from other languages".[41]
C++ inherits most of C's syntax. The following is Bjarne Stroustrup's version of the Hello world program that uses the C++ Standard Library stream facility to write a message to standard output:[42][43]
1 #include <iostream>
2
3 int main()
4 {
5     std::cout << "Hello, world!\n";
6 }

Object storage
As in C, C++ supports four types of memory management: static storage duration objects, thread storage duration objects, automatic storage duration objects, and dynamic storage duration objects.[44]
Static storage duration objects
Static storage duration objects are created before main() is entered (see exceptions below) and destroyed in reverse order of creation after main() exits. The exact order of creation is not specified by the standard (though there are some rules defined below) to allow implementations some freedom in how to organize their implementation. More formally, objects of this type have a lifespan that "shall last for the duration of the program".[45]
Static storage duration objects are initialized in two phases. First, "static initialization" is performed, and only after all static initialization is performed, "dynamic initialization" is performed.  In static initialization, all objects are first initialized with zeros; after that, all objects that have a constant initialization phase are initialized with the constant expression (i.e. variables initialized with a literal or constexpr). Though it is not specified in the standard, the static initialization phase can be completed at compile time and saved in the data partition of the executable.  Dynamic initialization involves all object initialization done via a constructor or function call (unless the function is marked with constexpr, in C++11). The dynamic initialization order is defined as the order of declaration within the compilation unit (i.e. the same file). No guarantees are provided about the order of initialization between compilation units.
Thread storage duration objects
Variables of this type are very similar to static storage duration objects. The main difference is the creation time is just prior to thread creation and destruction is done after the thread has been joined.[46]
Automatic storage duration objects
The most common variable types in C++ are local variables inside a function or block, and temporary variables.[47] The common feature about automatic variables is that they have a lifetime that is limited to the scope of the variable. They are created and potentially initialized at the point of declaration (see below for details) and destroyed in the reverse order of creation when the scope is left. This is implemented by allocation on the stack.
Local variables are created as the point of execution passes the declaration point. If the variable has a constructor or initializer this is used to define the initial state of the object. Local variables are destroyed when the local block or function that they are declared in is closed. C++ destructors for local variables are called at the end of the object lifetime, allowing a discipline for automatic resource management termed RAII, which is widely used in C++.
Member variables are created when the parent object is created. Array members are initialized from 0 to the last member of the array in order. Member variables are destroyed when the parent object is destroyed in the reverse order of creation. i.e. If the parent is an "automatic object" then it will be destroyed when it goes out of scope which triggers the destruction of all its members.
Temporary variables are created as the result of expression evaluation and are destroyed when the statement containing the expression has been fully evaluated (usually at the ; at the end of a statement).
Dynamic storage duration objects

These objects have a dynamic lifespan and are created with a call to new and destroyed explicitly with a call to delete.[48]
Templates

C++ templates enable generic programming. C++ supports function, class, alias and variable templates. Templates may be parameterized by types, compile-time constants, and other templates. Templates are implemented by instantiation at compile-time. To instantiate a template, compilers substitute specific arguments for a template's parameters to generate a concrete function or class instance. Some substitutions are not possible; these are eliminated by an overload resolution policy described by the phrase "Substitution failure is not an error" (SFINAE). Templates are a powerful tool that can be used for generic programming, template metaprogramming, and code optimization, but this power implies a cost. Template use may increase code size, because each template instantiation produces a copy of the template code: one for each set of template arguments, however, this is the same or smaller amount of code that would be generated if the code was written by hand.[49] This is in contrast to run-time generics seen in other languages (e.g., Java) where at compile-time the type is erased and a single template body is preserved.
Templates are different from macros: while both of these compile-time language features enable conditional compilation, templates are not restricted to lexical substitution. Templates are aware of the semantics and type system of their companion language, as well as all compile-time type definitions, and can perform high-level operations including programmatic flow control based on evaluation of strictly type-checked parameters. Macros are capable of conditional control over compilation based on predetermined criteria, but cannot instantiate new types, recurse, or perform type evaluation and in effect are limited to pre-compilation text-substitution and text-inclusion/exclusion. In other words, macros can control compilation flow based on pre-defined symbols but cannot, unlike templates, independently instantiate new symbols. Templates are a tool for static polymorphism (see below) and generic programming.
In addition, templates are a compile time mechanism in C++ that is Turing-complete, meaning that any computation expressible by a computer program can be computed, in some form, by a template metaprogram prior to runtime.
In summary, a template is a compile-time parameterized function or class written without knowledge of the specific arguments used to instantiate it. After instantiation, the resulting code is equivalent to code written specifically for the passed arguments. In this manner, templates provide a way to decouple generic, broadly applicable aspects of functions and classes (encoded in templates) from specific aspects (encoded in template parameters) without sacrificing performance due to abstraction.
Objects

C++ introduces object-oriented programming (OOP) features to C. It offers classes, which provide the four features commonly present in OOP (and some non-OOP) languages: abstraction, encapsulation, inheritance, and polymorphism. One distinguishing feature of C++ classes compared to classes in other programming languages is support for deterministic destructors, which in turn provide support for the Resource Acquisition is Initialization (RAII) concept.
Encapsulation
Encapsulation is the hiding of information to ensure that data structures and operators are used as intended and to make the usage model more obvious to the developer. C++ provides the ability to define classes and functions as its primary encapsulation mechanisms. Within a class, members can be declared as either public, protected, or private to explicitly enforce encapsulation. A public member of the class is accessible to any function. A private member is accessible only to functions that are members of that class and to functions and classes explicitly granted access permission by the class ("friends"). A protected member is accessible to members of classes that inherit from the class in addition to the class itself and any friends.
The object-oriented principle ensures the encapsulation of all and only the functions that access the internal representation of a type. C++ supports this principle via member functions and friend functions, but it does not enforce it. Programmers can declare parts or all of the representation of a type to be public, and they are allowed to make public entities not part of the representation of a type. Therefore, C++ supports not just object-oriented programming, but other decomposition paradigms such as modular programming.
It is generally considered good practice to make all data private or protected, and to make public only those functions that are part of a minimal interface for users of the class. This can hide the details of data implementation, allowing the designer to later fundamentally change the implementation without changing the interface in any way.[50][51]
Inheritance
Inheritance allows one data type to acquire properties of other data types. Inheritance from a base class may be declared as public, protected, or private. This access specifier determines whether unrelated and derived classes can access the inherited public and protected members of the base class. Only public inheritance corresponds to what is usually meant by "inheritance". The other two forms are much less frequently used. If the access specifier is omitted, a "class" inherits privately, while a "struct" inherits publicly. Base classes may be declared as virtual; this is called virtual inheritance. Virtual inheritance ensures that only one instance of a base class exists in the inheritance graph, avoiding some of the ambiguity problems of multiple inheritance.
Multiple inheritance is a C++ feature not found in most other languages, allowing a class to be derived from more than one base class; this allows for more elaborate inheritance relationships. For example, a "Flying Cat" class can inherit from both "Cat" and "Flying Mammal". Some other languages, such as C# or Java, accomplish something similar (although more limited) by allowing inheritance of multiple interfaces while restricting the number of base classes to one (interfaces, unlike classes, provide only declarations of member functions, no implementation or member data). An interface as in C# and Java can be defined in C++ as a class containing only pure virtual functions, often known as an abstract base class or "ABC". The member functions of such an abstract base class are normally explicitly defined in the derived class, not inherited implicitly. C++ virtual inheritance exhibits an ambiguity resolution feature called dominance.
Operators and operator overloading

C++ provides more than 35 operators, covering basic arithmetic, bit manipulation, indirection, comparisons, logical operations and others. Almost all operators can be overloaded for user-defined types, with a few notable exceptions such as member access (. and .*) as well as the conditional operator. The rich set of overloadable operators is central to making user-defined types in C++ seem like built-in types.
Overloadable operators are also an essential part of many advanced C++ programming techniques, such as smart pointers. Overloading an operator does not change the precedence of calculations involving the operator, nor does it change the number of operands that the operator uses (any operand may however be ignored by the operator, though it will be evaluated prior to execution). Overloaded "&&" and "||" operators lose their short-circuit evaluation property.
Polymorphism

Polymorphism enables one common interface for many implementations, and for objects to act differently under different circumstances.
C++ supports several kinds of static (resolved at compile-time) and dynamic (resolved at run-time) polymorphisms, supported by the language features described above. Compile-time polymorphism does not allow for certain run-time decisions, while runtime polymorphism typically incurs a performance penalty.
Static polymorphism

Function overloading allows programs to declare multiple functions having the same name but with different arguments (i.e. ad hoc polymorphism). The functions are distinguished by the number or types of their formal parameters. Thus, the same function name can refer to different functions depending on the context in which it is used. The type returned by the function is not used to distinguish overloaded functions and would result in a compile-time error message.
When declaring a function, a programmer can specify for one or more parameters a default value. Doing so allows the parameters with defaults to optionally be omitted when the function is called, in which case the default arguments will be used. When a function is called with fewer arguments than there are declared parameters, explicit arguments are matched to parameters in left-to-right order, with any unmatched parameters at the end of the parameter list being assigned their default arguments. In many cases, specifying default arguments in a single function declaration is preferable to providing overloaded function definitions with different numbers of parameters.
Templates in C++ provide a sophisticated mechanism for writing generic, polymorphic code (i.e. parametric polymorphism). In particular, through the curiously recurring template pattern, it's possible to implement a form of static polymorphism that closely mimics the syntax for overriding virtual functions. Because C++ templates are type-aware and Turing-complete, they can also be used to let the compiler resolve recursive conditionals and generate substantial programs through template metaprogramming. Contrary to some opinion, template code will not generate a bulk code after compilation with the proper compiler settings.[49]
Dynamic polymorphism
Inheritance

Variable pointers and references to a base class type in C++ can also refer to objects of any derived classes of that type. This allows arrays and other kinds of containers to hold pointers to objects of differing types (references cannot be directly held in containers). This enables dynamic (run-time) polymorphism, where the referred objects can behave differently depending on their (actual, derived) types.
C++ also provides the dynamic_cast operator, which allows code to safely attempt conversion of an object, via a base reference/pointer, to a more derived type: downcasting. The attempt is necessary as often one does not know which derived type is referenced. (Upcasting, conversion to a more general type, can always be checked/performed at compile-time via static_cast, as ancestral classes are specified in the derived class's interface, visible to all callers.) dynamic_cast relies on run-time type information (RTTI), metadata in the program that enables differentiating types and their relationships. If a dynamic_cast to a pointer fails, the result is the nullptr constant, whereas if the destination is a reference (which cannot be null), the cast throws an exception. Objects known to be of a certain derived type can be cast to that with static_cast, bypassing RTTI and the safe runtime type-checking of dynamic_cast, so this should be used only if the programmer is very confident the cast is, and will always be, valid.
Virtual member functions
Ordinarily, when a function in a derived class overrides a function in a base class, the function to call is determined by the type of the object. A given function is overridden when there exists no difference in the number or type of parameters between two or more definitions of that function. Hence, at compile time, it may not be possible to determine the type of the object and therefore the correct function to call, given only a base class pointer; the decision is therefore put off until runtime. This is called dynamic dispatch. Virtual member functions or methods[52] allow the most specific implementation of the function to be called, according to the actual run-time type of the object. In C++ implementations, this is commonly done using virtual function tables. If the object type is known, this may be bypassed by prepending a fully qualified class name before the function call, but in general calls to virtual functions are resolved at run time.
In addition to standard member functions, operator overloads and destructors can be virtual. As a rule of thumb, if any function in the class is virtual, the destructor should be as well. As the type of an object at its creation is known at compile time, constructors, and by extension copy constructors, cannot be virtual. Nonetheless a situation may arise where a copy of an object needs to be created when a pointer to a derived object is passed as a pointer to a base object. In such a case, a common solution is to create a clone() (or similar) virtual function that creates and returns a copy of the derived class when called.
A member function can also be made "pure virtual" by appending it with = 0 after the closing parenthesis and before the semicolon. A class containing a pure virtual function is called an abstract class. Objects cannot be created from an abstract class; they can only be derived from. Any derived class inherits the virtual function as pure and must provide a non-pure definition of it (and all other pure virtual functions) before objects of the derived class can be created. A program that attempts to create an object of a class with a pure virtual member function or inherited pure virtual member function is ill-formed.
Lambda expressions
C++ provides support for anonymous functions, also known as lambda expressions, with the following form:
[capture](parameters) -> return_type { function_body }

The [capture] list supports the definition of closures. Such lambda expressions are defined in the standard as syntactic sugar for an unnamed function object. An example lambda function may be defined as follows:
[](int x, int y) -> int { return x + y; }

Exception handling
Exception handling is used to communicate the existence of a runtime problem or error from where it was detected to where the issue can be handled.[53] It permits this to be done in a uniform manner and separately from the main code, while detecting all errors.[54] Should an error occur, an exception is thrown (raised), which is then caught by the nearest suitable exception handler. The exception causes the current scope to be exited, and also each outer scope (propagation) until a suitable handler is found, calling in turn the destructors of any objects in these exited scopes.[55] At the same time, an exception is presented as an object carrying the data about the detected problem.[56]
Note that many C++ "styles" like Google's,[57] forbid usage of exceptions in C++ programs.
The exception-causing code is placed inside a try block. The exceptions are handled in separate catch blocks (the handlers); each try block can have multiple exception handlers, as it is visible in the example below.[58]

 1 #include <iostream>
 2 #include <vector>
 3 #include <stdexcept>
 4
 5 int main() {
 6     try {
 7         std::vector<int> vec{3, 4, 3, 1};
 8         int i{vec.at(4)}; // Throws an exception, std::out_of_range (indexing for vec is from 0-3 not 1-4)
 9     }
10     // An exception handler, catches std::out_of_range, which is thrown by vec.at(4)
11     catch (std::out_of_range &e) {
12         std::cerr << "Accessing a non-existent element: " << e.what() << '\n';
13     }
14     // To catch any other standard library exceptions (they derive from std::exception)
15     catch (std::exception &e) {
16         std::cerr << "Exception thrown: " << e.what() << '\n';
17     }
18     // Catch any unrecognised exceptions (i.e. those which don't derive from std::exception)
19     catch (...) {
20         std::cerr << "Some fatal error\n";
21     }
22 }

It is also possible to raise exceptions purposefully, using the throw keyword; these exceptions are handled in the usual way. In some cases, exceptions cannot be used due to technical reasons. One such example is a critical component of an embedded system, where every operation must be guaranteed to complete within a specified amount of time. This cannot be determined with exceptions as no tools exist to determine the maximum time required for an exception to be handled.[59]
Standard library

The C++ standard consists of two parts: the core language and the standard library. C++ programmers expect the latter on every major implementation of C++; it includes aggregate types (vectors, lists, maps, sets, queues, stacks, arrays, tuples), algorithms (find, for_each, binary_search, random_shuffle, etc.), input/output facilities (iostream, for reading from and writing to the console and files), filesystem library, localisation support, smart pointers for automatic memory management, regular expression support, multi-threading library, atomics support (allowing a variable to be read or written to by at most one thread at a time without any external synchronisation), time utilities (measurement, getting current time, etc.), a system for converting error reporting that doesn't use C++ exceptions into C++ exceptions, a random number generator and a slightly modified version of the C standard library (to make it comply with the C++ type system).
A large part of the C++ library is based on the Standard Template Library (STL). Useful tools provided by the STL include containers as the collections of objects (such as vectors and lists), iterators that provide array-like access to containers, and algorithms that perform operations such as searching and sorting.
Furthermore, (multi)maps (associative arrays) and (multi)sets are provided, all of which export compatible interfaces. Therefore, using templates it is possible to write generic algorithms that work with any container or on any sequence defined by iterators. As in C, the features of the library are accessed by using the #include directive to include a standard header. The C++ Standard Library provides 105 standard headers, of which 27 are deprecated.
The standard incorporates the STL that was originally designed by Alexander Stepanov, who experimented with generic algorithms and containers for many years. When he started with C++, he finally found a language where it was possible to create generic algorithms (e.g., STL sort) that perform even better than, for example, the C standard library qsort, thanks to C++ features like using inlining and compile-time binding instead of function pointers. The standard does not refer to it as "STL", as it is merely a part of the standard library, but the term is still widely used to distinguish it from the rest of the standard library (input/output streams, internationalization, diagnostics, the C library subset, etc.).[60]
Most C++ compilers, and all major ones, provide a standards-conforming implementation of the C++ standard library.
Compatibility
To give compiler vendors greater freedom, the C++ standards committee decided not to dictate the implementation of name mangling, exception handling, and other implementation-specific features. The downside of this decision is that object code produced by different compilers is expected to be incompatible. There were, however, attempts to standardize compilers for particular machines or operating systems (for example C++ ABI),[61] though they seem to be largely abandoned now.
With C

C++ is often considered to be a superset of C but this is not strictly true.[62] Most C code can easily be made to compile correctly in C++ but there are a few differences that cause some valid C code to be invalid or behave differently in C++. For example, C allows implicit conversion from void* to other pointer types but C++ does not (for type safety reasons). Also, C++ defines many new keywords, such as new and class, which may be used as identifiers (for example, variable names) in a C program.
Some incompatibilities have been removed by the 1999 revision of the C standard (C99), which now supports C++ features such as line comments (//) and declarations mixed with code. On the other hand, C99 introduced a number of new features that C++ did not support were incompatible or redundant in C++, such as variable-length arrays, native complex-number types (however, the std::complex class in the C++ standard library provides similar functionality, although not code-compatible), designated initializers, compound literals, and the restrict keyword.[63] Some of the C99-introduced features were included in the subsequent version of the C++ standard, C++11 (out of those which were not redundant).[64][65][66] However, the C++11 standard introduces new incompatibilities, such as disallowing assignment of a string literal to a character pointer, which remains valid C.
To intermix C and C++ code, any function declaration or definition that is to be called from/used both in C and C++ must be declared with C linkage by placing it within an extern "C" {/*...*/} block. Such a function may not rely on features depending on name mangling (i.e., function overloading).
Criticism

Despite its widespread adoption, some notable programmers have criticized the C++ language, including Linus Torvalds,[67] Richard Stallman,[68] Joshua Bloch, Ken Thompson,[69][70][71] and Donald Knuth.[72][73]

One of the most often criticised points of C++ is its perceived complexity as a language, with the criticism that a large number of non-orthogonal features in practice necessitates restricting code to subset of C++, thus eschewing the readability benefits of common style and idioms. As expressed by Joshua Bloch:  I think C++ was pushed well beyond its complexity threshold and yet there are a lot of people programming it. But what you do is you force people to subset it. So almost every shop that I know of that uses C++ says, “Yes, we’re using C++ but we’re not doing multiple-implementation inheritance and we’re not using operator overloading.” There are just a bunch of features that you’re not going to use because the complexity of the resulting code is too high. And I don’t think it’s good when you have to start doing that. You lose this programmer portability where everyone can read everyone else’s code, which I think is such a good thing.
Donald Knuth (1993, commenting on pre-standardized C++), who said of Edsger Dijkstra that "to think of programming in C++" "would make him physically ill":[72][73]  The problem that I have with them today is that... C++ is too complicated. At the moment, it's impossible for me to write portable code that I believe would work on lots of different systems, unless I avoid all exotic features. Whenever the C++ language designers had two competing ideas as to how they should solve some problem, they said "OK, we'll do them both". So the language is too baroque for my taste.
Ken Thompson, who was a colleague of Stroustrup at Bell Labs, gives his assessment:[70][71]  It certainly has its good points. But by and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee.
Stroustrup campaigned for years and years and years, way beyond any sort of technical contributions he made to the language, to get it adopted and used. And he sort of ran all the standards committees with a whip and a chair. And he said “no” to no one. He put every feature in that language that ever existed. It wasn’t cleanly designed—it was just the union of everything that came along. And I think it suffered drastically from that.

However Brian Kernighan, also a colleague at Bell Labs, disputes this assessment:[74] C++ has been enormously influential. ... Lots of people say C++ is too big and too complicated etc. etc. but in fact it is a very powerful language and pretty much everything that is in there is there for a really sound reason: it is not somebody doing random invention, it is actually people trying to solve real world problems. Now a lot of the programs that we take for granted today, that we just use, are C++ programs.
Stroustrup himself comments that C++ semantics are much cleaner than its syntax: "within C++, there is a much smaller and cleaner language struggling to get out".[75]
Other complaints may include a lack of reflection or garbage collection, slow compilation times, perceived feature creep,[76] and verbose error messages, particularly from template metaprogramming.[77]
See also

Comparison of programming languages
List of C++ compilers
Outline of C++
C++ Libraries (category)

Further reading

– the ISO/IEC C++ Standard Working Group
– a non-profit organization that promotes the use and understanding of standard C++. Bjarne Stroustrup is a director of the organization.


The University of Kent (formerly the University of Kent at Canterbury, abbreviated as UKC) is a  semi-collegiate public research university based in Kent, United Kingdom. It was founded in 1965 and is recognised as a Beloff's plate glass university. The University was granted its Royal Charter on 4 January 1965 and the following year Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent was formally installed as the first Chancellor.[5]
The university has a rural campus north of Canterbury situated within 300 acres (1.2km2) of park land, housing over 6,000 students, as well as campuses in Medway and Tonbridge in Kent and European postgraduate centres in Brussels, Athens, Rome and Paris.[6] The University is international, with students from 158 different nationalities and 41% of its academic and research staff being from outside the United Kingdom.[7]
As of 2017, the University of Kent is ranked within the top 25 universities in the UK by the Guardian,[8] the Times Higher Education[9] and the Complete University Guide,[10] and has consistently scored 90% or higher for overall satisfaction in the National Student Survey.[11]  In 2016, over 28,000 students applied to the University through UCAS and over 4000 accepted an offer.[12] Almost three-quarters of the work submitted for the 2014 research assessments by the University was judged to be world-leading or internationally excellent.[13] It is a member of the Santander Network of European universities encouraging social and economic development.[14]
History
Origins
A university in the city of Canterbury was first considered in 1947, when an anticipated growth in student numbers led several residents to seek the creation of a new university, including Kent. However, the plans never came to fruition.[15] A decade later both population growth and greater demand for university places led to a re-consideration. In 1959 the Education Committee of Kent County Council explored the creation of a new university,[16] formally accepting the proposal unanimously on 24 February 1960.[17] Two months later the Education Committee agreed to seek a site at or near Canterbury, given the historical associations of the city, subject to the support of Canterbury City Council.[18]
By 1962 a site was found at Beverley Farm, straddling the then boundary between the City of Canterbury and the administrative county of Kent.[19] The university's original name, chosen in 1962, was the University of Kent at Canterbury, reflecting the fact that the campus straddled the boundary between the county borough of Canterbury and Kent County Council.[16] At the time it was the normal practice for universities to be named after the town or city whose boundaries they were in, with both "University of Kent" and "University of Canterbury" initially proposed. The name adopted reflected the support of both the city and county authorities; as well as the existence of the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, which officially opposed the use of a name too similar to its own.[20] The abbreviation "UKC"became a popular abbreviation for the university.[21]
1965 to 2000
The University of Kent at Canterbury was granted its Royal Charter on 4 January 1965 and the first batch of 500 students arrived in the October of that year. On 30 March 1966 Princess Marina, Duchess of Kent was formally installed as the first Chancellor.[5]
The University was envisaged as being a collegiate establishment, with most students living in one of the colleges on campus, and as specialising in inter-disciplinary studies in all fields.[22] Over the years, changes in government policy and other changing demands have largely destroyed this original concept, leading to the present state, which is nearer the norm for a British University. However, the four original colleges – Darwin, Eliot, Keynes and Rutherford – remain, together with the newer Woolf and Turing colleges, each with their own masters.[23]
The university grew at a rapid rate throughout the 1960s, with three colleges and many other buildings on campus being completed by the end of the decade.[24] The 1970s saw further construction, but the university also encountered the biggest physical problem in its history.[25] The university had been built above a tunnel on the disused Canterbury and Whitstable Railway. In July 1974 the tunnel collapsed, damaging part of the Cornwallis Building, which sank nearly a metre within about an hour on the evening of 11 July.[26] Fortunately, the university had insurance against subsidence, so it was able to pay for the south-west corner of the building to be demolished and replaced by a new wing at the other end of the building.[27] Building elsewhere included the Park Wood accommodation village and the Darwin houses in 1989.
In 1982 the university opened the University Centre at Tonbridge (now the University of Kent at Tonbridge) for its School of Continuing education, helping to enhance the availability of teaching across the county.[28]
During the 1990s and 2000s the University expanded beyond its original campus, establishing campuses in Medway, Tonbridge and Brussels, and partnerships with Canterbury College, West Kent College, South Kent College and MidKent College.[28]
2000 to present

In the 2000s the university entered a collaboration named Universities at Medway with the University of Greenwich, MidKent College and Canterbury Christ Church University to deliver university provision in the Medway area.[29] This led to the development of the University of Kent at Medway, opened from 2001. Initially based at Mid-Kent College, a new joint campus opened in 2004.[29] Small postgraduate centres opened in Paris in 2009, and later in Rome and Athens.
As a consequence of the expansion outside Canterbury the university's name was formally changed to the University of Kent on 1 April 2003.[29] Part of the original reasoning for the name disappeared when local government reforms in the 1970s resulted in the Canterbury campus falling entirely within the City of Canterbury, which no longer has county borough status, and Kent County Council.
In 2007 the university was rebranded with a new logo and website. The logo was chosen following consultation with existing university students and those in sixth forms across the country.[30]
The University of Kent set its tuition fees for UK and European Union undergraduates at £9,000 for new entrants in 2012, which was approved by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA). The fee was approved by Council on 1 April 2011 and was confirmed by OFFA in July 2011. The proposed changes to UK and EU undergraduate tuition fees did not apply to international student fees.
Following the extension of Keynes College in 2001, two new colleges opened on the Canterbury campus, Woolf College for postgraduates in 2008 and Turing College for undergraduates in 2015. Several other new buildings were also added, including the Jarman School of Arts Building in 2009, the Colyer-Fergusson Music Building, a performing arts space, in 2012, and the Sibson building, housing maths and the business school, in 2017. A major £27m project to extend and refurbish the Templeman Library began in 2013, was completed in 2017 and formally opened in 2018.[31] Additional accommodation was provided for students at the Medway Campus with the completion of Liberty Quays in 2009.[32]
In 2015, the University held a number of events to celebrate its 50th anniversary. Festivals were held in Canterbury and Medway, a summer festival, the funding of twelve Beacon Projects and the temporary erection of a Ferris Wheel on the Canterbury campus.[33] In 2016, a consultation was launched on a masterplan for future development of the Canterbury campus.[34] In March 2017 it was announced that, in partnership with Canterbury Christ Church University, the University of Kent had been given funding to develop Kent and Medway Medical School.[35]
Campuses
Canterbury campus
The main Canterbury campus covers 300 acres (1.2km2) and is situated in parkland in an elevated position just over two miles (3km) from the city centre, with views over the city and Canterbury Cathedral UNESCO world heritage site. The campus currently has approximately 12,000 full-time and 6,200 part-time students, with accommodation for over 5000, in addition to 600 academic and research staff. Residential and academic buildings are intermingled in the central part of the campus, science building are clustered west of Giles Lens and there is a dedicated student village on the western edge, several minutes’ walk from the main campus. The campus is ecologically diverse and home to a number of protected species, including Great Crested Newts. The North West of the site is heavily forested, including pockets of ancient woodland, while the Southern Slopes contain a mix of wildflower and hay meadows, and there are seven ponds spread across the campus.
Facilities

The campus has a selection of shops, including a grocery store, bookshop, pharmacy and launderettes. Food and drink is provided by range of cafes and bars run either by the University or the student union. Bars include K-bar, in Keynes College, Mungo’s, in Eliot College, Origins, in Darwin College, and Woody’s in the Park Wood Student Village. Cafeteria style food is available in Rutherford College, fine dining at the Beagle Restaurant in Darwin College, and food is served at the bars and other cafes around campus.
The campus nightclub, The Venue, was refurbished and modernised in 2010 and is open Wednesday to Saturday. The upstairs area was originally used a live music venue, known as The Lighthouse and then the Attic, but has since been replaced with the Student Media Centre which hosts Inquire, KTV and CSR. Club nights and live music are also held at various bars on campus.
Sporting facilities are spread across two main sites: the sports centre, which contains several multi-purpose sports halls, a fitness suite, squash courts and climbing wall, and the Sports Pavilion site, with a variety of indoor and outdoor sports pitches and training facilities, including 3G and astroturf.
The Gulbenkian arts complex includes a theatre and cinema, as well as a small stage which hosts monthly comedy nights as well as occasional shows such as Jazz at Five and The Chortle Student Comedy Awards. The adjacent Colyer-Fergusson Building, which opened in 2013, includes an adaptable format concert/rehearsal hall with retractable seating and variable acoustics and practice rooms. The Gulbenkian Theatre seats 340 and presents student, professional and amateur shows throughout the year. The theatre was opened in 1969 and was named after the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation which helped fund its construction. The Gulbenkian Cinema is an independent cinema in the Gulbenkian complex open to students and the general public. It is Kent's regional film theatre showing new mainstream and non-mainstream releases as well as archive and foreign language films. In the daytime the cinema is used as a lecture theatre for University students.[36] The Gulbenkian complex also hosts a cafe/ bar and restaurant facility open to students, staff and the general public.
Transport and access
The campus is accessed by road from either the West, with two entrances on the A290 Whitstable Road, or the East, via St Stephen’s Hill. An off-road foot and cycle route connects the central campus to the Northern edge of the city, and a regular bus services (‘UniBus’) is also in operation, although with a more limited service outside of term time. The A2 dual carriageway links the campus and city to London, the port at Dover and the national motorway network. The campus also lies at the southern end of the Crab and Winkle Way, a 7-mile off-road foot and cycle path running through farm and woodland to the coastal fishing town of Whitstable, providing a link for cycle commuters.
The closest railway station to the campus is Canterbury West which is, as of 2009, served by Southeastern High Speed trains, connecting Canterbury with London St Pancras International  in 56 minutes. These services stop at Ashford International en route, thus providing a direct connection to Eurostar services to France and Belgium. Standard Southeastern services also connect Canterbury West and Canterbury East Stations with London Victoria and Charing Cross. Both of the Canterbury stations can be accessed by the UniBus service. The nearest international air services are provided from the London airports, Gatwick and Heathrow, with indirect National Express coach services to both from Canterbury bus station with one transfer at London Victoria coach station. The campus is also served by two coach services (Route 007) to/from London each day, with further services operating from Canterbury bus station.
Medway campus
In 2000 the University joined with other educational institutes to form the "Universities for Medway" initiative, aimed at increasing participation in higher education in the Medway Towns.[29] The following year the University of Kent at Medway formally opened, initially based at Mid-Kent College.[29] By 2004 a new campus for the university had been established in the old Chatham Dockyard,[29] sharing a campus with Canterbury Christchurch University and University of Greenwich.
The University of Kent and Medway Park Leisure Centre have gone into a multimillion-pound partnership to provide high quality leisure facilities for university students and the general public. Medway Park (formerly the Black Lion Leisure Centre) was re-opened in 2011 by Princess Anne for use as a training venue for the 2012 London Olympics, as well as a training venue for the Egyptian and Congo National teams.
The campus accommodation was finished in late 2009 (called Liberty Quays), and caters for over 600 students. The accommodation building includes a Tesco Express, Subway, and Domino's Pizza, and Cargo, a bar showing sports, live music and entertainment

View from Pier Road
Medway Building at Medway campus
Gillingham Building at Medway campus
Drill Hall Library, sharing with Universities at Medway
Rochester Building at Medway campus
Liberty Quays accommodation

Tonbridge campus
In 1982 the university established the School of continuing education in the centre of Tonbridge, extending its coverage to the entire county of Kent.[37] Many buildings were added in the 1980s and 1990s.[28] The campus is now called the University of Kent at Tonbridge. It collaborates with the Kent Business School and Kent Innovation and Enterprise.

Organisation and administration

Faculties, departments and schools
The University is divided into three faculties, humanities, sciences and social sciences, which are further sub-divided into 20 schools:

Faculties and Schools
Humanities
Kent School of Architecture
School of Arts
School of English
School of European Culture and Languages
School of History
School of Music and Fine Art
Sciences
School of Bioscience
School of Computing
School of Engineering and Digital Arts
School of Mathematics, Statistics and Actuarial Science
Medway School of Pharmacy
School of Physical Sciences
School of Sport and Exercise Sciences
Social Sciences
School of Anthropology and Conservation
Kent Business School
School of Economics
Kent Law School
School of Politics and International Relations
School of Psychology
School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research
The original plan was to have no academic sub-divisions within the three faculties (initially Humanities, Social Sciences and Natural Sciences) and to incorporate an interdisciplinary element to all degrees through common first year courses ("Part I") in each faculty, followed by specialist study in the second and final years ("Part II").[22] The lack of Departments encouraged the development of courses that crossed traditional divides, such as Chemical Physics, Chemistry with Control Engineering, Biological Chemistry and Environmental Physical Science.[38]
However, the interdisciplinary approach proved increasingly complex for two reasons. The levels of specialisation at A Levels meant that many students had not studied particular subjects for some years and this made it impossible to devise a course that both covered areas unstudied by some and did not bore others. This proved an especial problem in Natural Sciences, where many Mathematics students had not studied Chemistry at A Level and vice versa.
 Additionally many subjects, particularly those in the Social Sciences, were not taught at A Level and required the first year as a grounding in the subject rather than an introduction to several different new subjects. Problems were especially encountered in the Faculty of Natural Sciences where the differing demands of Mathematics and physical sciences led to two almost completely separate programmes and student bases.[38] In 1970 this led to the creation of the School of Mathematical Studies, standing outside the Faculties.[39] The addition of other subjects led to increased pressure on common Part I programmes and increasingly students took more specialised Part I courses designed to prepare them for Part II study.[38]
Substantial change to this structure did not come until the 1990s, driven more by national government policy than curricular demands, which were, after all, very flexible by nature. In 1989 the Universities Funding Council, which was merged into the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 1992, was charged by the UK Government to determine the cost for teaching each subject. To meet these accountancy requirements, Kent required for the first time that each member of staff declare a single discipline they would be affiliated with in future. When departments were formed in the early 1990s this led to a great deal of reorganisation of staff, and destroyed many existing inter-disciplinary relationships. Following the formation of departments, finance was devolved to departments based on how many students were taught. This quickly evolved into undermining the interdisciplinary context further, as departments sought to control finance by increasing the amount of specialist teaching in the first year.
The university now has the Faculties further divided into 18 Departments and Schools, ranging from the School of English to the Department of Biosciences, and from the Kent Law School to the Department of Economics. Also of note is the University's Brussels School of International Studies, located in Brussels, Belgium. The school offers master's degrees in international relations theory and international conflict analysis, along with an LLM in international law. In 2005 a new department, the Kent School of Architecture, began teaching its first students. In 2008, Wye College came under Kent's remit, in joint partnership with Imperial College London.
Colleges

The University is divided into six colleges, each named after distinguished scholars. Colleges have academic schools, lecture theatres, seminar rooms and halls of residence. Each college has a Master, who is responsible for student welfare within their college. In chronological order of construction they are:

The university also has an associate college named Chaucer College.
There was much discussion about the names adopted for most of the colleges with the following alternative names all in consideration at one point or another: for Eliot: Caxton, after William Caxton; for Keynes: Richborough, a town in Kent; Anselm, a former Archbishop of Canterbury; and for Darwin: Anselm (again); Attlee, after Clement Attlee, the post war Prime Minister; Becket, after Thomas Becket, another former Archbishop (this was the recommendation of the college's provisional committee but rejected by the Senate); Conrad; Elgar, after Edward Elgar; Maitland; Marlowe, after Christopher Marlowe; Russell, after Bertrand Russell (this was the recommendation of the Senate but rejected by the Council); Tyler, after both Wat Tyler and Tyler Hill on which the campus stands. The name for the College proved especially contentious and was eventually decided by a postal ballot of members of the Senate, choosing from: Attlee, Conrad, Darwin, Elgar, Maitland, Marlowe and Tyler.[40]
(Both Becket and Tyler were eventually used as the names for residential buildings on campuses and the building housing both the Architecture and Anthropology departments is named Marlowe.)
Each college has residential rooms, lecture theatres, study rooms, computer rooms and social areas. The intention of the colleges was that they should not be just Halls of residence, but complete academic communities. Each college (except Woolf) has its own bar, all rebuilt on a larger scale, and originally its own dining hall (only Rutherford still has a functioning dining hall; Darwin's is hired out for conferences and events; Keynes's was closed in 2000 and converted into academic space, but in 2011 Dolche Vita was expanded and became the dining hall for Keynes students in catered accommodation after Keynes's expansion in 2011; and Eliot's was closed in 2006). It was expected that each college (more were planned) would have around 600 students as members, with an equivalent proportion of staff, with half the students living within the college itself and the rest coming onto campus to eat and study within their colleges. Many facilities, ranging from accommodation, tutorials and alumni relations, would be handled on a college basis. With no planned academic divisions below the Faculty level, the colleges would be main focus of students' lives and there would be no units of a similar or smaller size to provide a rival focus of loyalties.
This vision of a collegiate university has increasingly fallen away. The funding for colleges did not keep pace with the growth in student numbers, with the result that only four colleges were built. In later years when there was heavy student demand for scarce accommodation in Canterbury the solution was found in building additional on-campus accommodation but not in the form of further colleges. The hopes that students living off campus would stay around to eat dinner in their colleges were not met, whilst the abolition of college amenities fees removed students' direct stake in their colleges. With the growth of specialist subject departments as well as of other university wide facilities, more and more of the role of colleges was transferred to the central university. Accommodation and catering were transferred to the centralised University of Kent at Canterbury Hospitality (UKCH).[41]
Today the University does not operate as a traditional collegiate university – applications are made to the University as a whole, and many of the colleges rely on each other for day-to-day operation. Academic departments have no formal ties to colleges other than those that are located within particular college buildings due to availability of space, with lectures, seminars and tutorials taking place wherever there is an available room rather than on a college basis. Many students are allocated accommodation in their respective college, but some are housed in developments with no defined collegiate link whilst others are housed in different colleges.
Despite this the six College Student Committees, volunteer groups made up of elected officers and supporting volunteers, have retained a reasonably strong presence on campus. They run fundraising events and welfare campaigns throughout the academic year, and organise student events for their colleges during Welcome Week. Every student in the University retains a college affiliation to either Keynes, Eliot, Rutherford, Darwin or Park Wood even if they do not live in college accommodation. Students are encouraged to stay engaged with their College Committees throughout their time at the University.
Finances
In the financial year ended 31 July 2013, the University of Kent had a total income (including share of joint ventures) of £201.3million, grew by 5.8% with an additional £21.4million of fee income (2011/12 – £190.2million) and total expenditure of £188.7million (2011/12 – £175.9million).[42] Key sources of income included £98.5million from tuition fees and education contracts (2011/12 – £77.2million), £48.9million from Funding Council grants (2011/12 – £62.5million), £13.4million from research grants and contracts (2011/12 – £11.4million) and £1.2million from endowment and investment income (2011/12 – £1.09million).[42] During the 2012/13 financial year the University of Kent had a capital expenditure of £28.2million (2011/12 – £16.1million).[42]
At year end the University of Kent had endowment assets of £6.3million (2011/12 – £6.04million) and total net assets of £175.9million (2011/12 – £165.1million).[42]
Coat of arms and logo
The University of Kent's coat of arms was granted by the College of Arms in September 1967.[16] The white horse of Kent is taken from the arms of the County of Kent (and can also be seen on the Flag of Kent). The three Cornish choughs, originally belonging to the arms of Thomas Becket, were taken from the arms of the City of Canterbury. The Crest depicts the West Gate of Canterbury with a symbolic flow of water, presumably the Great Stour, below it. Two golden Bishops' Crosiers in the shape of a St. Andrews Cross are shown in front of it. The supporters – lions with the sterns of golden ships – are taken from the arms of the Cinque Ports.[43]
The Coat of Arms is now formally used only for degree certificates, degree programmes and some merchandise, as a result of the University seeking a consistent identity branding.[30]

The University logo pre-2007
The University logo post-2007

Academic profile
Research
Kent is a research-led university with 24 schools and 40 specialist research centres spanning the sciences, technology, medical studies, the social sciences, arts and humanities.[44] In the 2014 Research Assessment Exercise the University of Kent was ranked 40th out of 128 participating institutions in a 'grade point average' league table in The Times Higher Education Supplement (falling from 31st in 2008),[45] 30th in terms of 'Research Power' (rising from 40th in 2008),[45] and 19th in terms of 'Research Intensity' (rising from 49th in 2008).[46] The University had a total research income of £17 million in 2016.[47]
Rankings

For 2018 The Guardian newspaper ranked Kent 22nd in the UK, while The Sunday Times Good University Guide 2018 put Kent in 25th place, as does The Independent's Complete University Guide. QS places Kent 46th in the UK and 366th in the world, while Times Higher Education places it 44th in the UK and in the 301-350 group worldwide. In The Sunday Times 10-year (1998–2007) average ranking of British universities based on consistent league table performance, Kent was ranked 48th overall in the UK.[55] In 2015, Kent ranked ahead of 10 Russell Group universities according to the ranking of The Complete University Guide. In research, both The Guardian and The Times newspapers rank Kent 29th, with The Independent rating the university 28th for its overall research activity in 2014.[56]
The Complete University Guide shows that the average tariff points for entry were 353 UCAS points (old tariff) in 2017.[57]
The National Student Survey in 2017 placed Kent joint 20th in the UK, with an overall satisfaction of 90%.[58]
Library

The Templeman Library (named after Geoffrey Templeman, the University's first Vice-Chancellor) contains over a million items in stock including books, journals, videos, DVDs, and archive materials (for example, a full text of The Times from 1785 onwards), yet it is still only half its planned size. It has a materials fund of approximately £1million a year, and adds 12,000 items every year. It is open every day in term time, on a 24/7 basis. It receives 800,000 visits a year, with approximately half a million loans per annum.
The library also houses the British Cartoon Archive,[59] (established 1975[39]) a national collection of, mainly, newspaper cartoons, with over 90,000 images catalogued.
In 2013 work began to extend, refurbish and completely modernise the Templeman Library, including the addition of study space, along with the creation of a new purpose built lecture theatre. Additionally, the Library facade underwent major renovation. This work was completed in 2017, with additional refurbishment work planned for 2018.
Franco-British programme
The bilingual Franco-British double-degree programme combines subjects in one degree and is taught in two countries. The first year is spent at the Institut d'études politiques de Lille (IEP), the second and third years at the University of Kent, the fourth year at the IEP of Lille and the fifth is spent in Canterbury, Brussels or Lille.
The students of the Franco-British double-degree programme receive, at the end of the fourth year, the Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree from the University of Kent, the Diplôme by the IEP of Lille and, at the end of the fifth year, either the Master of Arts (MA) degree in Canterbury or in Brussels or the Master delivered by the IEP of Lille, chosen between 14 parcours de formation by the IEP of Lille.[60][61]
Student life
The student population is mixed, with around 15,000 undergraduates and 4,000 postgraduates, with approximately 22% of students coming from overseas.[62] Approximately 128 different nationalities are currently represented, and the female to male ratio is 55 women to every 45 men.[62]
Students' Union
The Students' Union, officially known as "Kent Union", is the student representative body for students at the university. It is led by five elected full-time officers (the 'sabbatical team'), a Board of trustees, part-time student officers and 'lay' members of the local community and business selected for their specialist expertise.
The Union runs two shops on campus, Essentials, an all-purpose food and essentials store, and Parkwood Essentials, in the Park Wood student village. The Union also operates the Park Wood bar Woody's and a 1,500 capacity nightclub The Venue which, unusually, is located on the central campus. Essentials, the Venue and other shops and Union offices are located in purpose-made buildings completed in 1998.[63]  Kent Union also co-ordinates over 200 sports clubs and societies, as well as media outlets, volunteering and charity activities, and provides student welfare services.
Demonstrations

In early March 1970 a General Meeting of the University of Kent at Canterbury Students' Union voted to occupy the Cornwallis Building as part of a national student movement to open personal records to individual student scrutiny.[64] The occupation lasted about two weeks, with a majority vote ending the occupation on 18 March. Approximately 400 students marched out of the Cornwallis Building to present a set of demands that were handed by Union President David Lawrence to the University Registrar Mr Eric Fox. The demands had been drawn up and debated by groups of up to 300 students at a time in meetings and seminars held throughout the occupation.[65]
In the early to mid-1970s, along with other plate-glass universities, the Union had a reputation for revolutionary politics, leading to demands for law changes from some staff trade unionists.[66] It was active in anti-poll tax, anti-student loans and anti-racism campaigns as well as safety campaigns on campus in the late 1980s.
In 2003, ahead of the 'Top Up Fees' vote, the Union took 300 students to take part in the NUS UK Student Demonstrations on three double decker buses.  The Union covered all the transport costs to the demonstration. In 2010, ahead of a parliamentary vote on issues concerning raising tuition fees, the Union took part in the national demonstrations. The union heavily subsidised the transport for 500 students to get to London.
Chaplaincy
Whilst the University is secular, there is a chaplaincy consisting of permanent Anglican and Catholic priests and a Pentecostal minister, as well as part-time chaplains from other denominations and faiths. The chaplaincy runs the annual Carol Service that takes place every year in Canterbury Cathedral at the end of Autumn Term.

Student housing
In addition to the student housing in the colleges, the University also has the following student housing:
Darwin Houses, a set of 26 student houses next to Darwin College, opened in 1989[37]
Becket Court, next to Eliot College, opened in 1990[63]
Tyler Court, three blocks of halls of residence. Block A was opened in 1995[63] mostly for postgraduates; Blocks B and C were completed in 2004[67] for undergraduates.
Parkwood, a mini student village comprising 262 two-storey houses and a recently built apartment complex, about 10minutes walk from the main campus. The initial houses were opened in 1980.[37] A large addition to the Parkwood area was completed in 2005, comprising a number of en-suite fitted rooms grouped into four, five and six bedroom flats.
Turing College was officially opened in September 2015; 9 buildings of 3 to 4 floors each[68].
Student media
CSR 97.4FM

University of Kent and Canterbury Christ Church University, as well as their associated Student Unions, fund Canterbury's only student and community radio station: CSR 97.4FM. The radio station is broadcasting from studios at both universities 24 hours a day, with live broadcasting from 7am – 12 am.
InQuire
The University has a student newspaper named InQuire and an online news website InQuirelive[69] (launched in January 2008). The newspaper is published every two weeks and is edited by a group of student volunteers. While the newspaper and website are funded by the Students' Union, the selection of content is independent but subject to moderation by Kent Union before physical publication. Content within InQuire is focused on campus issues and national news that affects students.
Kent Television

Kent Television or KTV is the newest member of the Kent Union student media family.[70] Founded in May 2012 it has already obtained nearly 200,000 views and has live broadcasting capabilities. KTV is run by volunteers and aims to provide students with regular entertaining and informative televisual content.
UKC Radio (1960s)

Notable alumni

See also

Coordinates:

How many students are enrolled at the University of Kent?