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

Cover......Page 1
Contents......Page 8
Preface......Page 12
Acknowledgments......Page 16
Introduction......Page 20
 Item 1: Choose your containers with care.......Page 30
 Item 2: Beware the illusion of container-independent code.......Page 34
 Item 3: Make copying cheap and correct for objects in containers.......Page 39
 Item 4: Call empty instead of checking size() against zero.......Page 42
 Item 5: Prefer range member functions to their single-element counterparts.......Page 43
 Item 6: Be alert for C++’s most vexing parse.......Page 52
 Item 7: When using containers of newed pointers, remember to delete the pointers before the container is destroyed.......Page 55
 Item 8: Never create containers of auto_ptrs.......Page 59
 Item 9: Choose carefully among erasing options.......Page 62
 Item 10: Be aware of allocator conventions and restrictions.......Page 67
 Item 11: Understand the legitimate uses of custom allocators.......Page 73
 Item 12: Have realistic expectations about the thread safety of STL containers.......Page 77
 Item 13: Prefer vector and string to dynamically allocated arrays.......Page 82
 Item 14: Use reserve to avoid unnecessary reallocations.......Page 85
 Item 15: Be aware of variations in string implementations.......Page 87
 Item 16: Know how to pass vector and string data to legacy APIs.......Page 93
 Item 17: Use “the swap trick” to trim excess capacity.......Page 96
 Item 18: Avoid using vector.......Page 98
 Item 19: Understand the difference between equality and equivalence.......Page 102
 Item 20: Specify comparison types for associative containers of pointers.......Page 107
 Item 21: Always have comparison functions return false for equal values.......Page 111
 Item 22: Avoid in-place key modification in set and multiset.......Page 114
 Item 23: Consider replacing associative containers with sorted vectors.......Page 119
 Item 24: Choose carefully between map::operator[] and map::insert when efficiency is important.......Page 125
 Item 25: Familiarize yourself with the nonstandard hashed containers.......Page 130
 Item 26: Prefer iterator to const_iterator, reverse_iterator, and const_reverse_iterator.......Page 135
 Item 27: Use distance and advance to convert a container’s const_iterators to iterators.......Page 139
 Item 28: Understand how to use a reverse_iterator’s base iterator.......Page 142
 Item 29: Consider istreambuf_iterators for character-by-character input.......Page 145
Chapter 5: Algorithms......Page 147
 Item 30: Make sure destination ranges are big enough.......Page 148
 Item 31: Know your sorting options.......Page 152
 Item 32: Follow remove-like algorithms by erase if you really want to remove something.......Page 158
 Item 33: Be wary of remove-like algorithms on containers of pointers.......Page 162
 Item 34: Note which algorithms expect sorted ranges.......Page 165
 Item 35: Implement simple case-insensitive string comparisons via mismatch or lexicographical_compare.......Page 169
 Item 36: Understand the proper implementation of copy_if.......Page 173
 Item 37: Use accumulate or for_each to summarize ranges.......Page 175
 Item 38: Design functor classes for pass-by-value.......Page 181
 Item 39: Make predicates pure functions.......Page 185
 Item 40: Make functor classes adaptable.......Page 188
 Item 41: Understand the reasons for ptr_fun, mem_fun, and mem_fun_ref.......Page 192
 Item 42: Make sure less means operator<.......Page 196
 Item 43: Prefer algorithm calls to hand-written loops.......Page 200
 Item 44: Prefer member functions to algorithms with the same names.......Page 209
 Item 45: Distinguish among count, find, binary_search, lower_bound, upper_bound, and equal_range.......Page 211
 Item 46: Consider function objects instead of functions as algorithm parameters.......Page 220
 Item 47: Avoid producing write-only code.......Page 225
 Item 48: Always #include the proper headers.......Page 228
 Item 49: Learn to decipher STL-related compiler diagnostics.......Page 229
 Item 50: Familiarize yourself with STL-related web sites.......Page 236
Bibliography......Page 244
Appendix A: Locales and Case-Insensitive String Comparisons......Page 248
Appendix B: Remarks on Microsoft’s STL Platforms......Page 258
 A......Page 264
 B......Page 265
 C......Page 266
 D......Page 267
 E......Page 268
 F......Page 270
 I......Page 271
 L......Page 272
 M......Page 273
 P......Page 274
 R......Page 275
 S......Page 276
 U......Page 278
 Z......Page 279