Introducing C++

Chapter 5. Using Standard Library Algorithms

In Chapter 4, you got several numbers through input and found the largest value in an array. In this chapter, you will do the same thing, this time using some standard library functions. I will also show you how to organize your code sensibly, so you can reuse your functions in different programs.

Let’s give the numbers a meaning: stock prices. Armed with a set of stock prices, you can find the largest, the smallest, and other properties. Over the rest of this book, I will show you how to simulate prices, read them from a file, and build a small trading-simulation game.

Getting Several Numbers Into a Vector (Again)

In the previous chapter, you put numbers into an array and then into a vector. The vector allows you to store a varying number of values, so it tends to be most people’s default choice of sequential container.

You’re going to use your code from Chapter 4 but reorganize it to make it easy to reuse. Each source file you have written so far has its own main function. Now, an application can have only one main but can include several source files. In this section, you will write two source files with extension .cpp, and your own header file, with extension .h. One source file will have the usual main function and will use the code from the second source file, which you will also reuse in future chapters.

Tip

It is a best practice to use the .cpp extension for your source files. You don’t have to, and some people use .cc or ...