C++ Standard Library, The: A Tutorial and Reference, 2nd Edition

Chapter 1. About This Book

1.1. Why This Book

Soon after its introduction, C++ became a de facto standard in object-oriented programming. This led to the goal of standardization. Only by having a standard could programs be written that would run on different platforms — from PCs to mainframes. Furthermore, a standard library would enable programmers to use general components and a higher level of abstraction without losing portability rather than having to develop all code from scratch.

Now, with the second standard, called C++11 (see Section 2.1, page 7, for the detailed history of C++ standards), we have a huge C++ standard library whose specification requires more than double the size of the core language features. The library enables the ...