In this chapter, we introduced three key components of the Standard Library—containers, iterators and algorithms. You learned about the linear sequence containers, array
(Chapter 7), vector
, deque
, forward_list
and list
, which all represent linear data structures. We discussed the nonlinear associative containers, set
, multiset
, map
and multimap
and their unordered versions. You also saw that the container adapters stack
, queue
and priority_queue
can be used to restrict the operations of the sequence containers vector
, deque
and list
for the purpose of implementing the specialized data structures represented by the container adapters. You learned the categories of iterators and that each algorithm can be used with any container that supports the minimum iterator functionality the algorithm requires. You also learned the features of class bitset
, which makes it easy to create and manipulate bit sets as a container.
The next chapter continues our discussion of the Standard Library’s containers, iterators and algorithms with a detailed treatment of algorithms. You’ll also learn about function pointers, function objects and C++11’s lambda expressions.