THE C++ STANDARD TEMPLATE LIBRARY
Course Duration: 3 days Course Overview: The C++ Standard Template Library is a large part of the C++ Standard Library. STL consists of three major components: data structures, algorithms and iterators. Every data structure you are likely to want is available, including familiar containers such as array, list, deque, stack, queue, set and others. Also available are a plethora of algorithms, such as sort(), search(), merge(), find() and others. The third major component of STL, iterators, link the algorithms to the data structures. Iterators are a generalization of pointers, and are designed for efficient traversal through the data structures. The course consists of two modules. The first module, Fundamentals of STL, begins with an overview of C++ templates. If your students are already familiar with templates, this chapter can be covered briefly as a review. Otherwise, it should be covered thoroughly, including the exercises at the end of the chapter. The second chapter gives an overview of STL, including its history and evolution. It also surveys the major features of STL. There is no lab for this chapter, which is intended to provide an orientation to the whole subject, not the details. Chapter 3 contains a large number of simple examples illustrating the main features of STL. It could be called “a tour of STL.” At this point students should already have a reasonable working knowledge of the subject. The rest of the course elaborates on the individual features. Chapter 4 covers STL containers, and Chapter 5 covers STL iterators. The second module, Intermediate STL, covers the remaining features of STL. Chapter 1 introduces function objects, which are objects of any class that overloads the function call operator, operator(). Most STL algorithms accept a function object as a parameter, allowing the programmer to vary the way an algorithm works. Chapter 2 covers STL algorithms. The third chapter discusses container adaptors, which are STL components that can be used to change the interface of another component. They support the creation of STL classes such as stack and queue from lower-level components such as vector and list. The course concludes with an introduction to allocators, which are used by STL to encapsulates memory model information. LEARNING OBJECTIVES · · · · · Use any of the data structures contained in STL Use any of the algorithms contained in STL Connect algorithms to containers using STL iterators Demonstrate the principles of generic programming Apply STL algorithms to the standard C and C++ data types
Prerequisites: Students should have a working knowledge of C++.
COURSE OUTLINE
Module 1. Fundamentals of STL An Overview of Templates · Templates · Overloading functions · Template functions · Specializing a template function · Disambiguation under specialization · Template classes · An array template class · Instantiating a template class object · Rules for templates · Non member function with a template argument · Friends of template classes · Templates with multiple type parameters · Non type parameters for template classes · Comments regarding templates Overview of the Standard Template Library · Perspective · History and evolution · New features in C++ · The Standard Template Library · Design goals · Header files · STL components · Containers · Algorithms · Iterators Examples from STL · Example: vectors, lists · Example: maps · Example: sets · Example: multiset · Example: find with a vector · Example: find with a list · Example: merge · Iterators · Function objects · Adaptors STL Containers · Vector · Deque · List · The beauty of STL · Associative Containers · Set · Multiset · Map · Multimap STL Iterators · Input iterators · Output iterators · Forward iterators · Backward iterators Module 2. Intermediate STL Function Objects · Function objects vs. function pointers · Predicate function objects · Comparison function objects · Numeric function objects · Programmer supplied function objects · Built-in function objects
STL Algorithms · Non-Mutating sequence algorithms · Mutating sequence algorithms · Sorting and searching algorithms · Numeric algorithms · General Container Adaptors · Wrapper classes · Stack container adaptors · Queue container adaptors · Priority_Queue container adaptors Allocators · Rationale · Default Allocator · Custom Allocators · Container Storage Allocation