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The C++ Standard Library, 2nd

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27 Apr 2014 2  
This book is a must-have resource for any C++ developer!

This article is in the Book Review chapter. Reviews are intended to provide you with information on books - both paid and free - that others consider useful and of value to developers. Read a good programming book? Write a review!

We are still waiting for some more books about the new C++ standard. Fortunately for us, some authors managed to write books even before the new C++ is even well "domesticated". One of such examples is the book mentioned in the title of this article.

In short: This is a must-have resource for any C++ developer! It will help you understand new features of the Standard Library. Moreover, it will give you in depth view of important areas related to your daily work.

Pros

  • Nice (but not too long) introduction to the new standard on the first pages of the book. Only C++11 is mentioned.
  • Lots of subjects: Pairs and Tuples, Smart Pointers, Type Traits, Clocks (chrono), STL Containers, New STL Containers (unordered), Iterators, Lambdas in STL, Algorithms, Strings, RegExp, IO Operations, Internationalization, Numerics, Concurrency (async, thread, mutex...).
  • Straightforward introduction to the particular feature in the beginning of a chapter and advanced, in depth view, at the end. That way, you can get a quick taste of a given topic and then go deeper if you need.
  • I was afraid that this book would contain only tables with STL classes/methods. But it is not. Each area is very well written, with lots of examples... but of course, tables are also there for a reference.
  • Over 1000 pages! It seems to be quite hard to read. But, all in all, in such books, this is an advantage and means that the author did a good job and knows the subject in a great detail.

Cons

  • eBook version might have some problems with formatting.
  • Quite heavy... but you can always buy eBook version (if you accept the formatting... :))
  • As usual, you may want to look at Errata for this book. But this is not main flaw of course.

Conclusion

Although for daily work, it is usually faster to use such sites like http://en.cppreference.com/ or http://www.cplusplus.com/ "The C++Standard Library ..." book is very valuable and useful resource. Especially when you want to understand STL better.

I bought this book some time ago and I am still reading/using it. It is not the type of a book that you would read once and then put on a shelf. It was a great purchase for me.

Now I am waiting for more books that will instruct how to use C++11/14 through bigger examples/contexts. For instance: Effective C++11 that is being written by Scott Mayers (will be available probably this - 2014 - year).

License

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