Description
C++'s Standard Template Library is revolutionary, but learning to use it well has always been a challenge for students. In Effective STL, best-selling author Scott Meyers (Effective C++, More Effective C++) reveals the critical rules of thumb employed by the experts -- the things they almost always do or almost always avoid doing -- to get the most out of the library. This book offers clear, concise, and concrete guidelines to C++ programmers. While other books describe what's in the STL, Effective STL shows the student how to use it. Each of the book's 50 guidelines is backed by Meyers' legendary analysis and incisive examples, so the student will learn not only what to do, but also when to do it - and why.
Appropriate Courses
Features
Table Of Contents
Preface.
Acknowledgments.
Introduction.
1. Containers.
Item 2: Beware the illusion of container-independent code.
Item 3: Make copying cheap and correct for objects in containers.
Item 4: Call empty instead of checking size against zero.
Item 5: Prefer range member functions to their single-element counterparts.
Item 6: Be alert for C++'s most vexing parse.
Item 7: When using containers of newed pointers, remember to delete the pointers before the container is destroyed.
Item 8: Never create containers of auto_ptrs.
Item 9: Choose carefully among erasing options.
Item 10: Be aware of allocator conventions and restrictions.
Item 11: Understand the legitimate uses of custom allocators.
Item 12: Have realistic expectations about the thread safety of STL containers.
2. Vector and string.
Item 14: Use reserve to avoid unnecessary reallocations.
Item 15: Be aware of variations in string implementations.
Item 16: Know how to pass vector and string data to legacy APIs.
Item 17: Use "the swap trick" to trim excess capacity.
Item 18: Avoid using vector
3. Associative Containers.
Item 20: Specify comparison types for associative containers of pointers.
Item 21: Always have comparison functions return false for equal values.
Item 22: Avoid in-place key modification in set and multiset.
Item 23: Consider replacing associative containers with sorted vectors.
Item 24: Prefer map::insert to map::operator when efficiency is a concern.
Item 25: Familiarize yourself with the nonstandard hashed containers.
4. Iterators.
Item 27: Use distance and advance to convert const_iterators to iterators.
Item 28: Understand how to use a reverse_iterator's base iterator.
Item 29: Consider istreambuf_iterators for character by character input.
5. Algorithms.
Item 31: Know your sorting options.
Item 32: Follow remove-like algorithms by erase if you really want to remove something.
Item 33: Be wary of remove-like algorithms on containers of pointers.
Item 34: Note which algorithms expect sorted ranges.
Item 35: Implement simple case-insensitive string comparisons via mismatch or lexicographical_compare.
Item 36: Use not1 and remove_copy_if to perform a copy_if.
Item 37: Use accumulate or for_each to summarize sequences.
6. Functors, Functor Classes, Functions, etc.