The STL

• Reference for this section:
  • Stroustrup, Bjarne. The C++ Programming Language, Third Edition,Addison-Wesley, 1997
• The Standard Template Library Containers
• Provides access to a standard set of ADT's.
  • vector<T> - a one dimensional vector (array)
  • list<T> - a doubly linked list
  • deque<T> - a double ended queue (insert at front and back)
  • queue<T> - a queue
  • stack<t>
  • Others
• Design Criteria
  • Flexibility
  • Common user interface
  • We still need to know what is efficient and what is not.
  • Ie with a common user interface, we might use a list where we want an array.
  • Each type has additional operators.
• The Vector container
  • #include <vector>
  • vector <type> V;
  • Iterators
    • vector <type>::iterator i;
    • vector <type>::const_iterator ci;
    • vector <type>::reverse_iterator ri;
    • vector <type>::const_reverse_iterator cri;
    • Const iterators point to items that we can't change.
    • V.begin() - points to the first element in the vector
    • V.end() points one past the last
    • for(i=V.begin();i != V.end(),i++)
    • The same is true for V.rbegin() - the last element
    • V.rend() - one past the first (a non element);
    • Iterators and reverse iterators are not the same type
  • Insertion and extraction
    • V.push_back(item) inserts item at the end of the list.
    • V.pop_back - deletes the last item from the list, no return
    • V[i] - accesses element i
    • V.at(i) same as V[i]
    • V.insert(iterator pos, item) inserts at poisition pos
    • V.clear() - remove all elements from the vector
    • V.back() - reference to last element.
    • V.front - reference to first element.
  • Others
    • V.erase(iterator) - remove this item
    • = - make a copy of this vector
    • V.size() - the number of elements in the vector
    • V.Swap(vector) - swaps two vectors
    • comparison operators , ==, !=, <, <=, >, >=
  • As we will see later, resizing an array has some expense associated with it, so we can give an initial size.
    • vector <element> name (size);
  • a silly example
• Stack
  • Notice, a vector with push_back, and back and pop_back() will work just fine. (for push, top, and pop)
  • "This happens not to be my favorite style of stack, but it's arguably more efficient and it's the standard", Stroustrup
  • Has pop(), push(), and top()
  • But pop does not return a value.
• list
  • Vector sans at and []
  • has splice, merge, and sort
  • has push_front, pop_front
• deque - double ended queue
  • list functions
• queue
  • built on dequeue
  • added functions front(), back(), push(), pop()
  • pop does not return a value.
  • some code