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

Summary

In this chapter, we looked to understand the crucial concept of exception safety with the STL. We explored the different levels of exception safety, namely basic and strong guarantees, and outlined strategies to ensure that your programs are resilient to exceptions. We learned how to maintain program invariants and resource integrity through detailed discussions, mainly focusing on RAII principles and guarded operations to prevent resource leaks and maintain container states during exceptions.

Understanding exception safety is indispensable for writing robust C++ applications. It ensures that, even in the face of errors, your software’s integrity remains intact, preventing resource leaks and preserving the validity of data structures. This knowledge is the backbone of reliable and maintainable code, as it allows us to uphold strong guarantees that our applications will behave predictably under exceptional conditions.

In the next chapter, titled Thread Safety and...