A Tour of C++, 2nd Edition

8

Library Overview

Why waste time learning when ignorance is instantaneous?

– Hobbes

• Introduction

• Standard-Library Components

• Standard-Library Headers and Namespace

• Advice

8.1 Introduction

No significant program is written in just a bare programming language. First, a set of libraries is developed. These then form the basis for further work. Most programs are tedious to write in the bare language, whereas just about any task can be rendered simple by the use of good libraries.

Continuing from Chapters 1–7, Chapters 9–15 give a quick tour of key standard-library facilities. I very briefly present useful standard-library types, such as string, ostream, variant, vector, map, path, unique_ptr, thread, regex, and complex, as well as the most common ...