Customer Reviews

Extended STL, Volume 1: Collections and Iterators

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Extended STL is a remarkable book. Matthew Wilson explores new C++ horizons. He invents new concepts and idioms and demonstrates them in real code, which is used in production (via the various STLSoft libraries). I've never read a book before that covers the spectrum from very high-level conceptual innovations to the most low-level implementation details.

The book is perfect for library writers that wish to create portable C++ libraries that work across compilers and platforms. It is not very useful for application developers (even STLSoft users).

The flow is very good and the important points are explained thoroughly. I also liked the concise tips that are sprinkled throughout the book and highlight key points like:

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Tip: Check class invariants at the start (and end) of all public methods, including non-mutating ones, to maximize early detection of overwrites in errant code elsewhere in the process
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I read the book cover to cover, but in small portions. Towards the middle, I started to skip over the implementation details, because it was too much for me.

Wilson's approach is to provide the ultimate performance and expressiveness (along with other important properties like modularity, robustness, flexibility and discoverability). This sometimes leads to libraries that platform-specific. Wilson justifies it by saying that the platforms differences are too great to encapsulate without seriously reducing one or more of the other desirable properties. So, there is a UNIXSTL and WINSTL with different interfaces that you can't use directly if you write code that needs to run on multiple platforms. There is also a PLATFORMSTL that has cross-platform components, but I'm not sure what are the relations between them. There are also several high-level libraries that are fully platform-independent and are built on top of the STLSoft libraries.

Note, that I have never used the STLSoft libraries, so I may be gravely wrong and in this case I apologize.

What I took from this book is that C++ is even richer and more complex than I have imagined. I dabbled in templates and I'm fairly educated about meta-programming, but I don't think I'll write any STL extensions myself anytime soon. I will definitely consider the STLSoft libraries (and the high-level libraries) for my next cross-platform C++ project. I'm also looking forward to the next book to see what Wilson is going to unearth.

Gigi

This book explains container and iterator concepts very well and applies STL way of programming to different set of problems. It does provide somehow different point of angle to STL programming however in many parts reiterates the things said in the past. Anyway I recommend to the readers who has an interest on advanced STL programming.