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)

Using the standard C API

This description is necessarily almost as brief and incomplete as our discussion of POSIX earlier. For a complete description of the facilities in <stdio.h>, you'll have to consult another source, such as cppreference.com or your local man pages.

In the "C-style" API, POSIX file descriptors are given a new name: the thing corresponding to a file descriptor is called FILE, and the thing corresponding to an integer file descriptor handle is (naturally) called FILE*. Just as in the POSIX API, though, you'll never construct an instance of FILE yourself.

To create a new FILE object and get a pointer to it, you use the fopen function; for example, FILE *fp = fopen("myfile.txt", "r"). The second argument is a string (that is, a pointer to a null-terminated array of characters--generally, you'll just use a string...