Customer Reviews

STL for C++ Programmers

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Mr Ammeraal writes in a clear, easily understood style. He light on theory but very clear on application. However the book does not have the depth to be a refernce manual. In fact, he doesn't even cover the entire STL. The String class isn't even mentioned. The index is minimalistic. If you need to get a basic understanding of the STL and do not plan on manipulating character strings, this will get you started. If you need to understand the string class or are looking for a useful reference manual, stay away from this book.

This text was a great introduction to the use of STL, but it lacked depth in that it only covered how to use STL not how STL works, or how a programmer may derive their own STL classes from the base. It would have been very informative to get a look at a set of overridden classes such as a special iterator, a variant of an allocator class where a constructor with parameters is called instead of the base constructor, etc.. I haven't been able to find such an in-depth book yet. This book never claimed to explain these sort of questions, but it would have been extremely useful, say as the last chapter.

This book helped me out a lot in college.
Somewhere along the road, someone took my copy, so I bought another one.
Has what I look for in every good computer book - enough theory to gain an understanding and enough examples to get some hands on.

I thought this was a really thorough and economically written explanation of the Standard Template Library (STL) that is used to write great C++ code. The STL is a constant feature in my C++ programs. On many occasions it has allowed me to program faster, better and in a more standardized fashion. The STL is really a distillation of the reasonable things that should be done with C++ to make it more useful. It's worth reading just so that you know what to expect when you read other people's code. I've used knowledge from this book to complete academic programming projects in a fraction of the time they otherwise would've taken. I wrote a program to detect senile people using the STL. This book is not wordy. It dwells on the detailed nuts and bolts of the STL rather than on concepts. It offers good examples. I don't think it includes any kind of C++ refresher. You better know some C++ before you pick this book up. I guess it's a bit dated but as far as a I know it describes things that haven't changed. I'm giving it 5 stars because it might be better than more thorough or recent books since it covers the things you need to know rather than everything there is to know.