Book Image

Data Structures and Algorithms with the C++ STL

By : John Farrier
5 (2)
Book Image

Data Structures and Algorithms with the C++ STL

5 (2)
By: John Farrier

Overview of this book

While the Standard Template Library (STL) offers a rich set of tools for data structures and algorithms, navigating its intricacies can be daunting for intermediate C++ developers without expert guidance. This book offers a thorough exploration of the STL’s components, covering fundamental data structures, advanced algorithms, and concurrency features. Starting with an in-depth analysis of the std::vector, this book highlights its pivotal role in the STL, progressing toward building your proficiency in utilizing vectors, managing memory, and leveraging iterators. The book then advances to STL’s data structures, including sequence containers, associative containers, and unordered containers, simplifying the concepts of container adaptors and views to enhance your knowledge of modern STL programming. Shifting the focus to STL algorithms, you’ll get to grips with sorting, searching, and transformations and develop the skills to implement and modify algorithms with best practices. Advanced sections cover extending the STL with custom types and algorithms, as well as concurrency features, exception safety, and parallel algorithms. By the end of this book, you’ll have transformed into a proficient STL practitioner ready to tackle real-world challenges and build efficient and scalable C++ applications.
Table of Contents (30 chapters)
Free Chapter
1
Part 1: Mastering std::vector
7
Part 2: Understanding STL Data Structures
13
Part 3: Mastering STL Algorithms
19
Part 4: Creating STL-Compatible Types and Algorithms
23
Part 5: STL Data Structures and Algorithms: Under the Hood

Searching and comparison

Searching through data is a common yet crucial operation that most software requires. Whether you’re trying to retrieve specific user details from a database or find a book’s position in a sorted list, a robust search technique is paramount. With its plethora of algorithms, the STL offers several methods to search through sequences efficiently. Moreover, the library provides intuitive ways to compare sequences and retrieve extreme values, making data analysis more streamlined.

When working with sorted data, std::binary_search is a power player. It’s a testament to the importance of keeping data sorted wherever feasible. By repeatedly dividing the dataset in half, it locates the desired element, making it an exceptionally speedy tool. However, this is merely a boolean operation; it informs if the element exists, but not where it exists. For that, we lean on std::lower_bound and std::upper_bound. These functions retrieve iterators pointing...