An Effective Introduction to the STL

Details of this On-Site C++ Training for Programmers
Presented by Leor Zolman

A 4-Day Course of Lectures and Lab Exercises

Who Should Attend:

• Experienced C++ programmers who are interested in learning what the STL has to offer.
• Experienced C++ programmers who are interested in generic programming.

Prerequisites:

Supplied Materials:

• All printed course notes are provided in printed form and also in PDF format on CD-ROM or USB stick, along with sample programs, lab building blocks/solutions and other bonus materials.
• A copy of Leor Zolman's STL Error Decryptor program. This tool transforms lengthy, difficult-to-understand STL diagnostics into short, readable error messages to facilitate learning the STL. The tool works with Microsoft Visual C++ 6/7 under both the IDE and command-line development environments, Comeau C++, Metrowerks CodeWarrior 7/8, Intel C++, Borland C++ and gcc 2/3

Course Outline:

• Concepts and Architecture of the STL:
  • Arrays and pointers, half-open ranges
  • Generalizing pointers to iterators
  • Generalizing arrays to sequences
  • Algorithms
  • Conventions and extensibility
  • Function objects
  • STL headers
  • iterators vs. const_iterators
  • Thread safety and the STL
  • Exercises


• Containers I: Introduction and Sequence Containers:
  • Overview of containers and container adapters
  • Containers and iterator invalidation
  • Universal container functionality
  • vector and string
    • size, capacity, "the swap trick," and "shrink to fit"
    • vector operations
    • Using vector with C APIs
    • vector<bool>
    • string functionality
  • deque functionality
  • list functionality
  • Exercises


• Containers II: Associative Containers:
  
  • Comparison functions
  • Equality vs. equivalence
  • std::pair
  • Search functionality: find, count, lower_bound, upper_bound, equal_range
  • Insertion and erasure
  • In-place element modification
  • Sorted vectors as an alternative to associative containers
  • Exercises


• Iterators
  • reverse_iterators and const_reverse_iterators
  • Stream iterators
  • C++'s most vexing parse
  • Insert iterators
  • Iterator categories
  • Iterators vs. pointers
  • Exercises


• Function Objects and Adapters:
  • bind1st, bind2nd, not1, not2
  • The unary_function and binary_function base classes
  • ptr_fun, mem_fun, mem_fun_ref
  • Overview of standard function objects (e.g., less<T>)
  • Exercises


• Algorithms:
  • Overview of types of algorithms
  • Algorithms vs. same-named member functions
  • Detailed looks at for_each, transform, remove
  • Overview of searching algorithms
  • Overview of reordering algorithms
  • Overview of modifying algorithms
  • Overview of removing algorithms
  • Overview of copying algorithms
  • Overview of creation algorithms
  • Overview of summarizing algorithms
  • Exercises


• Common STL Extensions:
  • Hashed associative containers
  • slist
  • rope
  • SGI adapters: compose1, compose2, select1st, select2nd, etc.
  • Exercises


• Further Reading

Format:

Lectures and labs

Length:

4 full days