Book Image

Mastering the C++17 STL

By : Arthur O'Dwyer
Book Image

Mastering the C++17 STL

By: Arthur O'Dwyer

Overview of this book

Modern C++ has come a long way since 2011. The latest update, C++17, has just been ratified and several implementations are on the way. This book is your guide to the C++ standard library, including the very latest C++17 features. The book starts by exploring the C++ Standard Template Library in depth. You will learn the key differences between classical polymorphism and generic programming, the foundation of the STL. You will also learn how to use the various algorithms and containers in the STL to suit your programming needs. The next module delves into the tools of modern C++. Here you will learn about algebraic types such as std::optional, vocabulary types such as std::function, smart pointers, and synchronization primitives such as std::atomic and std::mutex. In the final module, you will learn about C++'s support for regular expressions and file I/O. By the end of the book you will be proficient in using the C++17 standard library to implement real programs, and you'll have gained a solid understanding of the library's own internals.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)

Iterator categories

Let's revisit the count and count_if functions that we introduced in
Chapter 1, Classical Polymorphism and Generic Programming. Compare the function template definition in this next example to the similar code from that chapter; you'll see that it's identical except for the substitution of a pair of Iterators (that is, an implicitly defined range) for the Container& parameter--and except that I've changed the name of the first function from count to distance. That's because you can find this function, almost exactly as described here, in the Standard Template Library under the name std::distance and you can find the second function under the name std::count_if:

    template<typename Iterator>
int distance(Iterator begin, Iterator end)
{
int sum = 0;
for (auto it = begin; it != end; ++it) {
sum += 1...