Addison.Wesley.Effective.Stl.50.Specific.Ways.To.Improve.Your.Use.Of.Stl

Sure, the STL has iterators, algorithms, and function objects, but for most C

programmers, it's the containers that stand out. More powerful and flexible than arrays,

they grow (and often shrink) dynamically, manage their own memory, keep track of

how many objects they hold, bound the algorithmic complexity of the operations they

support, and much, much more. Their popularity is easy to understand. They're simply

better than their competition, regardless of whether that competition comes from

containers in other libraries or is a container type you'd write yourself. STL containers

aren't just good. They're really good.

This chapter is devoted to guidelines applicable to all the STL containers. Later

chapters focus on specific container types. The topics addressed here include selecting

the appropriate container given the constraints you face: avoiding the delusion that

code written for one container type is likely to work with other container types: the

significance of copying operations for objects in containers: difficulties that arise when

pointers of auto_ptrs are stored in containers: the ins and outs of erasing: what you can

and cannot accomplish with custom allocators: tips on how to maximize efficiency:

and considerations for using containers in a threaded environment.