STL Overview

  The Standard Template Library  is a new C++ library that provides a set of easily composable C++ container classes and generic algorithms (template functions).

• The container  classes include vectors, lists, deques, sets, multisets, maps, multimaps, stacks, queues and priority queues.
• The generic algorithms include a broad range of fundamental algorithms for the most common kinds of data manipulations, such as searching, sorting, merging, copying, and transforming.

At its July 1994 meeting, the ANSI/ISO C++ Standards Committee voted to adopt STL as part of the standard C++ library. The STL proposal to the committee by Alex Stepanov and Meng Lee of Hewlett-Packard Labs was based on research on generic programming and generic software libraries that Stepanov, Lee, and David Musser have been working on for several years, in Scheme, Ada, and C++.

As with previously adopted proposals for extensions to C++ or its standard library, it is expected that compiler and library vendors will soon be incorporating STL into their products.

The information on STL in these Mosaic pages, originally compiled as a reference for courses and research projects at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, is being made available for wider use on the World Wide Web. This work has been partially supported by a gift from Hewlett Packard Corporation and by National Science Foundation Grant CDA-9214892.