Ivor Horton's Beginning Visual C++®2008

Chapter 10. The Standard Template Library

At its name implies, the Standard Template Library (STL) is a library of standard class and function templates. You can use these templates to create a wide range of powerful general-purpose classes for organizing your data as well as functions for processing that data in various ways. The STL is defined by the standard for native C++ and is therefore always available with a conforming compiler. Because of its broad applicability, the STL can greatly simplify programming in many of your C++ applications.

Of course, the STL for native C++ does not work with C++/CLI class types but in Visual C++ 2008 you have an additional version of the STL available that contains templates and generic functions that you can instantiate with C++/CLI class types.

In this chapter you will learn:

• What capabilities are offered by the STL

• What containers are and how you create and use them

• What iterators are and how you use them with containers

• The types of algorithms that are available with the STL and how you can apply the more common ones

• What function objects are and how they are used with the STL

• How to use the STL version that supports C++/CLI class types

What Is the Standard Template Library?

The STL is a large collection of class and function templates that is provided with your native C++ compiler. I'll first explain in general terms the kinds of resources the STL provides and how they interact with one another before diving into the detail of working examples. ...