STL Pocket Reference

Conventions Used in This Book

This book uses the following typographic conventions:

Italic

Used for filenames, URLs, emphasis, and for the first use of a technical term.

Constant Width

Used for identifiers and symbols.

Constant Width Italic

Used for names that are not specified by the standard, such as hidden names of temporary objects.

Constant Width Bold

Used in complex declarations to highlight the name being declared. In some C++ declarations, especially for templates, the name gets buried in the middle of the declaration and can be hard to spot.

In this book, the mathematical notation of [first, last) is often used to denote a range. The square bracket marks an inclusive endpoint of a range, and the parenthesis marks an exclusive endpoint of a range. Thus, [first, last) means a range that extends from first to last, including first but excluding last. Read more about ranges in the Iterators section later in this book.

Every function, class, and template in the STL, like the rest of the standard library, resides in the std namespace. This book omits the std:: qualifier from declarations, descriptions, and most examples for the sake of brevity.