readme.old

C++ Standard Library, A Tutorial and Reference source code

The present implementation reflects the version of the STL document
dated: August 18, 1994.

It has many minor differences from the previous versions. The most
significant are:

	- inclusion of reference types in the allocators and containers;
	- inclusion of the reverse iterator type and rbegin(), rend()
	  functions in the containers;
	- inclusion of swap function in the containers;
	- elimination of empty and restrictor throughout.

To illustrate how to use allocators, several types of allocators and
containers using them are included.

The new version of STL has been compiled on:

Borland 4.0
EDG
IBM xlC
IBM C set

It would take an effort to port this code to a cfront based
compilers (e.g. HP). We have no experience with G++. 

There are some cases on which any of these compilers do not compile STL
code, but it is usually corner cases. Moreover, on Borland, for
example, STL does not compile the same cases on which Borland's own
library does not compile. 

We did not have time to put the ifdefs that will work around different
compiler bugs. The code is "generic" with only some workarounds for
the Borland compiler in it.

Users of Borland need to either comment out the definitions of min and
max in algobase.h or comment out Borland's min and max in stdlib.h.

You might encounter the following compiler problems:

1. functions that take const T & as an argument do not match arguments
of type T&. (Happens with max and min, for example.) The error
messages on Borland say "Illegal structure operation in ...". Three
possible workarounds are:
	- replacing const T& with T&;
	- replacing const T& with T;
	- providing a manual instantiation of an offending function.

2. Compiler matches templates incorrectly. That happens often if
different memory models are used together. copy, for example, is
instantiated for int* and then the same instance is used for copy(int
__huge *, ...). This bug is very hard to catch, because it is only run
time detectable. (Occasionally it might be indicated with a warning:
"Suspicious pointer conversion".) 

3. destroy does not work for your built-in type. (Most compilers have
a variant of this one.) As a workaround, provide your own destroy for
the type. (We include many of them in defalloc.h)


The only non-implemented parts of the STL as described in the document
are:

1) Constructor templates and insert templates for containers taking
two arbitrary iterators. They are simulated by a constructors taking
pointers.

2) Parameterization of containers with a template allocator is
simulated with the help of cpp.

3) Since bool is not yet implemented as a type on most compilers -
vector<bool> is impemented as bit_vector.

4) Default template arguments have to be always explicitly given.

The total amount of code that would need to be re-written when the
corresponding features are supported is of the order of 20 lines.


We intend to keep improving the implementation.  Therefore, we would
appreciate your comments and algorithmic bug reports.  Please send them
to:

[e-mail]

or to:

[e-mail]. com

or to:

[e-mail]

Please do not send us reports of compiler bugs.  Report them to your
compiler vendors.

The following files are included:

algo.h - includes all the algorithms
algobase.h - auxiliary file
bool.h - simulates bool
bvector.h - bit_vector
defalloc.h - allocator
deque.h - deque
doc.bar.ps - postscript of the document with change bars from the previous 
	version of the document
doc.ps - postscript of the document
doc.mif - framemaker's Maker Interchange Format of the document
faralloc.h - far_allocator 
fdeque.h - far_deque
flist.h - far_list
fmap.h - far_map
fmultmap.h - far_multimap
fmultset.h - far_multiset
fset.h - far_set
function.h - operators, function objects and function adaptors
hdeque.h - huge_deque
heap.h - auxiliary file
hlist.h - huge_list
hmap.h - huge_map
hmultmap.h - huge_multimap
hmultset.h - huge_multiset
hset.h - huge_set
hugalloc.h - huge_allocator
hvector.h - huge_vector
iterator.h - iterator tags, stream iterators and iterator adaptors
lbvector.h - long_bit_vector
ldeque.h - long_deque
list.h - list
llist.h - long_list
lmap.h - long_map
lmultmap.h - long_multimap
lmultset.h - long_multiset
lngalloc.h - long_allocator
lset.h - long_set
map.h - map
multimap.h - multimap
multiset.h - multiset
neralloc.h - near_allocator
nmap.h - near_map
nmultmap.h - near_multimap
nmultset.h - near_multiset
nset.h - near_set
pair.h - pair
projectn.h - auxiliary file
random.cpp - random number generator. It should be compiled and 
	linked if random_shuffle is used.
set.h - set
stack.h - container adaptors
tempbuf.cpp - an auxiliary buffer for get_temporary_buffer; it should be 
	compiled and linked if get_temporary_buffer, stable_partition,
	inplace_merge or stable_sort are used.
tempbuf.h - get_temporary_buffer
tree.h - auxiliary file
vector.h - vector