I'm looking for a good book or website on how C++ works under the hood. Some topics might be virtual function lookup tables, function name mangling, class/struct relationship, etc.
Even better, something that covers other languages as well (I'd love to know more about Perl's internals)
Thanks!
Those sorts of internals you list are implementation dependent. It's one of the things that makes C/C++ different than other languages is there's quite a bit of latitude for the implementer.
The best book on C++ for me is Stroustrup's "Design and Evolution of C++" - not quite what you're asking but covers why C++ is the way that it is. That book is very old.
I haven't read it, but you may want to consider Inside the C++ Object Model by Stan Lippman
SGI produced a book called "C++ Language System Overview" which had several articles on the physical implementation of the language. Of particular interest was an article by Stroustrup on how multiple inheritance and casting is carried out. It also had an overview of iostreams, and templates. It has a lot more detail than the ARM, but obviously not as much breadth. I'm not sure if it's available at SGI (soft/hardcopy), but you could google, and see if someone has a copy.
Stroustrup wrote a book in the early days of C++ called "The Design and Evolution of C++". It's a bit dated now, but I consulted with it a lot when I was working on Metrowerks' C++ compiler to understand some of the key ideas behind the language.
If you want to understand a modern C++ implementation, including vtable layout, look at the ABI description for Itanium (IA64). This was worked on by Intel and the compiler community to ensure that different C++ implementations for that architecture would be compatible.
While not exactly related to internals, the "Effective Serices" (Effective C++, etc.) gives good insight to some of the quirkiness of C++.