Effective STL

Chapter 5. Algorithms

I noted at the beginning of Chapter 1 that containers get the lion’s share of the STL acclaim. In a sense, that’s understandable. The containers are remarkable accomplishments, and they make life easier for legions of C++ programmers on a daily basis. Still, the STL algorithms are significant in their own right, equally capable of lightening a developer’s burden. In fact, given that there are over 100 algorithms, it’s easy to argue that they offer programmers a more finely honed tool set than the containers (a mere eight strong) could ever hope to match. Perhaps their number is part of the problem. Making sense of eight distinct container types is surely less work than remembering 70 algorithm names and trying to keep track ...