Software Engineering Stack Exchange
Software Engineering Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [stl]

About the "Standard Template Library", which inspired the major parts C++ Standard Library

The Standard Template Library (STL) is a software library for the programming language that influenced many parts of the C++ . It provides four components called algorithms, containers, functions, and Iterators.

28 questions
36
votes
10 answers

What is the point of using lists over vectors, in C++?

I've run 3 different experiments involving C++ lists and vectors. Those with vectors proved more efficient, even when a lot of insertions in the middle were involved. Hence the question: in which case do lists make more sense than vectors? If…
Marek Stanley
  • 471
32
votes
3 answers

What difference is there between using a struct and a std::pair?

I am a C++ programmer with limited experience. Supposing I want to use an STL map to store and manipulate some data, I would like to know if there is any meaningful difference (also in performance) between those 2 data structure approaches: Choice…
Marco Stramezzi
  • 705
  • 2
  • 6
  • 16
25
votes
7 answers

Should the STL be avoided in large applications?

This might sound as a weird question, but in my department we are having trouble with following situation: We are working here on a server application, which is growing larger and larger, even at the point that we are considering to split it into…
Dominique
  • 1,846
  • 2
  • 18
  • 28
21
votes
6 answers

Is it practical to abandon STL in C++ development?

I know in some areas (game industry, for example), STL is not recommended. So my question is: is it really a good practice not to use STL in some cases? If so, what's the biggest reasons of not using the modern C++'s STL?
CaptainJH
  • 409
19
votes
3 answers

QT-C++ vs Generic C++ and STL

Been brushing up on my C++ lately, on Ubuntu QQ. I love the Qt framework for everything, especially building GUI's. I became quite familiar with it when using PyQt over the last few years. When using PyQt, I had some issues that are now more…
Vector
  • 3,241
18
votes
1 answer

How did std::vector come about?

Today, virtually all C++ developers agree that std::vector was a mistake since it is deceivingly not a container, and its use cases largely overlap with those of std::bitset anyway. How did it get voted into the standard? Was it controversial…
xcvii
  • 291
11
votes
5 answers

How to design exceptions

I'm struggling with a very simple question: I'm now working on a server application, and I need to invent a hierarchy for the exceptions (some exceptions already exist, but a general framework is needed). How do I even start doing this? I'm thinking…
Dominique
  • 1,846
  • 2
  • 18
  • 28
8
votes
2 answers

What's wrong with statically linking the STL into multiple shared libraries?

Here is the scenario: libA.so and libB.so both statically link to the same STL. libA.so has a public API that returns a std::string. libB.so calls this function and receives a copy of the string. When libB.so's copy of the string goes out of scope…
user1509041
  • 101
7
votes
3 answers

Are there languages that expand on the STL's iterator types?

Many languages use the concept of an iterator. The c++ STL expands on this with input iterators, output iterators, forward, bidirectional, random access and others. As far as I know, these distinctions don't exist in other languages. In this talk…
Matthew Finlay
  • 483
5
votes
2 answers

Differences between streams and iterators in C++?

I'm working on code which will provide a generic C++ interface to relational datasets. Some of the data will be in tables in memory (e.g. std::set or std::vector), but some of it will be computed - either produced by a function computing results of…
Dennis
  • 206
5
votes
4 answers

Why is using classic for loops as iterators in stl considered bad?

I've read a couple of articles (example) that consider the classic for (int ...... size() .... i++) loop bad practice when iterating through for example vectors in stl. Instead the recommended why is to use vector iterators, i.e. begin, end,…
Karlth
  • 243
4
votes
1 answer

How does a priority_queue maintain a heap on a deque efficiently?

In the C++ STL, priority_queue (heap) can be used with any underlying container, such as a deque. How does the implementation stay O(log n) if deques don't swap an item in index a with index b in constant time?
aaazalea
  • 699
4
votes
4 answers

What kind of interface should a double container offer?

I want to write a class which offers two sequences of elements to its users. The first one (lets call it "primary") is the main of the class and will be use 80% of the time. The second one (lets call it "secondary") is less important, but still need…
authchir
  • 370
3
votes
3 answers

High level overview of how printf() works with Windows OS

I asked this question on an IRC channel, sadly I am going around in circles. I am aiming for a high level overview (but with some technical details if necessary) on how a function such as printf() from stdio.h "talks" to the Windows operating…
user5623335
  • 143
3
votes
1 answer

When was STL formally introduced into C++ standard?

I fail to infer the exact point of historical introduction of STL into actual C++ standard library from the wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Template_Library It appears to me that C++11 was somehow significant for this STL,…
Loves Probability
  • 159
1
2