Effective STL 50 Specific Ways to Improve

"This is Effective C++ volume three - it's really that good." - Herb Sutter, independent consultant and secretary of the ISO/ANSI C++ standards committee"There are very few books which all C++ programmers must have. Add Effective STL to that list." - Thomas Becker, Senior Software Engineer, Zephyr Associates, Inc., and columnist, C/C++ Users JournalC++'s Standard Template Library is revolutionary, but learning to use it well has always been a challenge. Until now. In this book, best-selling author Scott Meyers (Effective C++, and 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. Other books describe what's in the STL. Effective STL shows you how to use it. Each of the book's 50 guidelines is backed by Meyers' legendary analysis and incisive examples, so you'll learn not only what to do, but also when to do it - and why. Highlights of Effective STL include: bull;Advice on choosing among standard STL containers (like vector and list), nonstandard STL containers (like hash_set and hash_map), and non-STL containers (like bitset). bull;Techniques to maximize the efficiency of the STL and the programs that use it. bull;Insights into the behavior of iterators, function objects, and allocators, including things you should not do. bull;Guidance for the proper use of algorithms and member functions whose names are the same (e.g., find), but whose actions differ in subtle (but important) ways. bull;Discussions of potential portability problems, including straightforward ways to avoid them. Like Meyers' previous books, Effective STL is filled with proven wisdom that comes only from experience. Its clear, concise, penetrating style makes it an essential resource for every STL programmer.

Scott Meyers is one of the world's foremost authorities on C++, providing training and consulting services to clients worldwide. He is the author of the best-selling Effective C++ series of books (Effective C++, More Effective C++, and Effective STL) and of the innovative Effective C++ CD. He is consulting editor for Addison Wesley's Effective Software Development Series and serves on the Advisory Board for The C++ Source (http://www.artima.com/cppsource). He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Brown University. His web site is http://www.aristeia.com.

Preface

xi

Acknowledgments

xv

Introduction

1

(10)

Containers

11

(52)

Choose your containers with care

11

(4)

Beware the illusion of contaier-independent code

15

(5)

Make copying cheap and correct for objects in containers

20

(3)

Call empty instead of checking size() against zero

23

(1)

Prefer range member functions to their single-element counterparts

24

(9)

Be alert for C++'s most vexing parse

33

(3)

When using containers of newed pointers, remember to delete the pointers before the container is destroyed

36

(4)

Never create containers of auto_ptrs

40

(3)

Choose carefully among erasing options

43

(5)

Be aware of allocator conventions and restrictions

48

(6)

Understand the legitimate uses of custom allocators

54

(4)

Have realistic expectations about the thread safety of STL containers

58

(5)

vector and string

63

(20)

Prefer vector and string to dynamically allocated arrays

63

(3)

Use reserve to avoid unnecessary reallocations

66

(2)

Be aware of variations in string implementations

68

(6)

Know how to pass vector and string data to legacy APIs

74

(3)

Use ``the swap trick'' to trim excess capacity

77

(2)

Avoid using vector⟨bool⟩

79

(4)

Associative Containers

83

(33)

Understand the difference between equality and equivalence

83

(5)

Specify comparison types for associative containers of pointers

88

(4)

Always have comparison functions return false for equal values

92

(3)

Avoid in-place key modification in set and multiset

95

(5)

Consider replacing associative containers with sorted vectors

100

(6)

Choose carefully between map::operator[] and map::insert when efficiency is important

106

(5)

Familiarize yourself with the nonstandard hashed containers

111

(5)

Iterators

116

(12)

Prefer iterator to const_iterator, reverse_iterator, and const_reverse_iterator

116

(4)

Use distance and advance to convert a container's const_iterators to iterators

120

(3)

Understand how to use a reverse_iterator's base iterator

123

(3)

Consider istreambuf_iterators for character-by-character input

126

(2)

Algorithms

128

(34)

Make sure destination ranges are big enough

129

(4)

Know your sorting options

133

(6)

Follow remove-like algorithms by erase if you really want to remove something

139

(4)

Be wary of remove-like algorithms on containers of pointers

143

(3)

Note which algorithms expect sorted ranges

146

(4)

Implement simple case-insensitive string comparisons via mismatch or lexicographical_compare

150

(4)

Understand the proper implementation of copy_if

154

(2)

Use accumulate or for_each to summarize ranges

156

(6)

Functors, Functor Classes, Functions, etc

162

(19)

Design functor classes for pass-by-value

162

(4)

Make predicates pure functions

166

(3)

Make functor classes adaptable

169

(4)

Understand the reasons for ptr_fun, mem_fun, and mem_fun_ref

173

(4)

Make sure less⟨T⟩ means operator⟨

177

(4)

Programming with the STL

181

(44)

Prefer algorithm calls to hand-written loops

181

(9)

Prefer member functions to algorithms with the same names

190

(2)

Distinguish among count, find, binary_search, lower_bound, upper_bound, and equal_range

192

(9)

Consider function objects instead of functions as algorithm parameters

201

(5)

Avoid producing write-only code

206

(3)

Always #include the proper headers

209

(1)

Learn to decipher STL-related compiler diagnostics

210

(7)

Familiarize yourself with STL-related web sites

217

(8)

Bibliography

225

(4)

Appendix A: Locales and Case-Insensitive String Comparisons

229

(10)

Appendix B: Remarks on Microsoft's STL Platforms

239

(6)

Index

245

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Effective STL 50 Specific Ways to Improve Your Use of the Standard Template Library

Summary

Author Biography

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials