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

Swapping and reversing in STL containers

While we have traversed through adding, initializing, and refining our STL containers, there lies an equally intriguing domain where we maneuver and shuffle elements to align with our requirements. This section promises to take you on an expedition, showcasing the capabilities of the STL in repositioning and reshuffling elements while also touching upon intricate manipulations including deduplication and sampling.

Swapping – the art of interchanging

In many real-world scenarios, the need arises to interchange content between containers. Whether for load balancing, data synchronization, or other computational tasks, the STL offers the swap function, an efficient and streamlined mechanism.

For instance, the std::swap can be used with almost all STL containers. If you’ve two std::vectors and wish to exchange their contents, std::swap does the magic in constant time without any overhead of copying or moving individual elements...