Customer Reviews

The C++ Standard Library Extensions: A Tutorial and Reference

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The subtitle of this book is "A Tutorial and Reference". As a tutorial, I found this book to be lacking. The explanations are terse, quite unlike the more user-friendly tutorial style of Nicolai Josuttis in "C++ Standard Library".

Second, as a reference, this book is also lacking on two counts. The index is incomplete! In the first month of use, I discovered major omissions in the index! Also, the formatting of the function listings makes it difficult to find a particular function by browsing through the section. Sometimes it takes minutes.

The author knows his material, and the information is accurate. I have not encountered any errors in the text, and it seems to be complete. But this book does not live up to the quality of its predecessor text, mentioned above. And it does not live up to its subtitle.

No doubt this review will be voted down by people trying to sell the book, but there you have it -- details and specifics.

This will become a "must have" book for C++ programmers. It is both easy to understand and authoritative at the same time. It will be useful for a long, long time, first as a learning tool and then as a reference.

Implementations of TR1 are now available from Boost (free) and Dinkumware (reasonably priced), so these library components are something that a C++ programmer can start using right away. Most or all of them will also be part of the next standard, so they are sure to become ever more widely used.

I like the fact the book is hard-cover, since it is likely to get a lot of use. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I still think a book like this is the easiest way to study something new, and really learn about it.

I already posted one review, but Amazon seems to have lost it. I'm surprised there haven't been more reviews posted - the book deserves more.

There are many, perhaps too many, books on C++. But Becker breaks new ground. He presents what is coming down the road towards the current C++ programmer. The existing C++ standard library is good but limited. The widespread use of C++ led to recognition of useful classes that should be in this library but are not. After some years of dilly dallying, Technical Report 1 was produced. Work started in 2001. Six years!

This book explains the classes in TR1. While it is not guaranteed that all of TR1 will make it into the next official standard library, most certainly will. The only real question is when that revision will be released. Given the way C++ changes so slowly, don't hold your breath.

In the interim, you can make good professional use of your time by studying TR1 via this book. It's not a simple rendition of the classes. Becker devotes considerable space to explaining the usages of the new classes. Giving you the gist of what they are about. Just as importantly, each chapter has a set of exercises involving its classes. Tackling these is probably the best way to gain experience.

Of the new classes, what interests you most will vary with the reader. Personally, I was most impressed with the Numerics. Huge improvements in dealing with floats and overflows (NaNs). And for physicists or engineers, there are specialised functions that will save some coding. Laguerre polynomials, Legendre functions, gamma functions, Bessel functions and Hermite polynomials, amongst others. A far richer set than what you currently get in the standard library.