PART II
C++ LIBRARIES AND FRAMEWORKS

NEO: Why do my eyes hurt?
MORPHEUS: You’ve never used them before.
—The Matrix

Part II exposes you to the world of C++ libraries and frameworks, including the C++ Standard Library (stdlib) and the Boost Libraries (Boost). The latter is an open source volunteer project to produce muchneeded C++ libraries.

In Chapter 10, you’ll tour several testing and mocking frameworks. In a major departure from Part I, most listings in Part II are unit tests. These provide you with practice in testing code, and unit tests are often more succinct and expressive than printf-based example programs.

Chapter 11 takes a broad look at smart pointers, which manage dynamic objects and facilitate the most powerful resource management model in any programming language.

Chapter 12 explores the many utilities that implement common programming tasks.

Chapter 13 delves into the massive suite of containers that can hold and manipulate objects.

Chapter 14 explains iterators, the common interface that all containers provide.

Chapter 15 reviews strings and string operations, which store and manipulate human-language data.

Chapter 16 discusses streams, a modern way to perform input and output operations.

Chapter 17 illuminates the filesystem library, which provides facilities for interacting with filesystems.

Chapter 18 surveys the dizzying array of algorithms that query and manipulate iterators.

Chapter 19 outlines the major approaches to concurrency, which allows your programs to run simultaneous threads of execution.

Chapter 20 reviews Boost ASIO, a cross-platform library for network and low-level input/output programming using an asynchronous approach.

Chapter 21 provides several application frameworks that implement standard structures required in everyday application programming.

Part II will function well as a quick reference, but your first reading should be sequential.