Chapter 16. An Introduction to the Standard Template Library

Put in simple terms, the standard template library (STL) is a set of template classes and functions that supply the programmer with

  • Containers for storing information

  • Iterators for accessing the information stored

  • Algorithms for manipulating the content of the containers

In this lesson, you will gain an overview on these three pillars of STL.

STL Containers

Containers are STL classes that are used to store data. STL supplies two types of container classes:

  • Sequential containers

  • Associative containers

Sequential Containers

As the name suggests, these are containers used to hold data in a sequential fashion, such as arrays and lists. Sequential containers are characterized by a fast insertion time, ...

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