Debunking Stroustrup's debunking of the myth “C++ is for large, complicated, programs only”

Wolfram

This feels like complete cheating

Import["http://www.stroustrup.com/C++.html", "Hyperlinks"]

So just add some honest parsing on top

Cases[
 Import["http://www.stroustrup.com/C++.html", "XMLObject"],
 XMLElement["a", {___, "href" -> link_, ___}, ___] :> 
  link /; StringMatchQ[link, RegularExpression["((http://)?www([./#\\+-]\\w*)+)"]]
, Infinity]

C++

#include <boost/asio.hpp>
#include <regex>
#include <iostream>
int main() {
    std::string server = "www.stroustrup.com";
    std::string request = "GET http://" + server + "/C++.html HTTP/1.0\r\nHost: " + server + "\r\n\r\n";
    boost::asio::ip::tcp::iostream s{server, "http"};
    s << request;
    std::regex pat{R"((http://)?www([./#\+-]\w*)+)"};
    std::smatch m;
    for (std::string l; getline(s, l);)
        if (std::regex_search(l, m, pat))
            std::cout << m[0] << "\n";
}

The main shortcoming is the awkward nature of boost::asio, I'm sure it can be even shorter with a better library.

Pure Bash on Linux/OS X (no external utilities)

HTTP client software is notoriously bloated. We don't want those kinds of dependencies. Instead we can push the appropriate headers down a TCP stream and read the result. No need to call archaic utilities like grep or sed to parse the result.

domain="www.stroustrup.com"
path="C++.html"
exec 3<> /dev/tcp/$domain/80
printf "GET /$path HTTP/1.1\r\nhost: %s\r\nConnection: close\r\n\r\n" "$domain" >&3
while read -u3; do
    if [[ "$REPLY" =~ http://[^\"]* ]]; then
        printf '%s\n' "$BASH_REMATCH"
    fi
done

Meh - I suppose it could be more readable...