Week 9a - Standard Library

Readings and Activities for the Week:

Glossary of Terms

1. Projects:

   • Sample Project #1, Code folder
     Lexical scanner
   • Sample Project #2. Code folder
     Rule-based parser
   • Sample Project #3, Code folder
     Parser with Abstract Syntax Tree
   • Sample Project #4, Code folder
     Code Analyzer

2. Strings

   Strings are instances of the std::basic_string<T> class.
   std::string is an alias for std::basic_string<char> and std::wstring is an alias for std::basic_string<wchar_t>.
   Strings hold null terminated collections of characters, stored in contiguous memory in the native heap.
   They have all the important members of the STL classes, including members:

   • begin() returns an iterator pointing to the first character in the collection
   • end() returns an iterator pointing to one past the last character in the collection
   • default, copy construction, move construction, copy assignment, move assignment, and (non-virtual) destruction operations

   That means that a class holding only strings and perhaps STL containers, does not need to implement
   constructors, assignment, and destruction, because those compiler generated operations are correct.

   It also means that the STL algorithms work with strings. Here is an example of std::string use:

   • String Helper functions - trim and split

3. Streams

   A collection of libraries for stream-based I/O, for the console, files, and in-memory strings.
   Streams use the insertion operator<<(...) and extraction operator>>(...) to build composable input and output operations.

   structure of the streams library

   Need to refactor these code folders Almost all of the capabilities of the streams library are demonstrated here:

   • formatting I/O
     Uses std::istream and std::ostream
   • reading and writing files
     Uses std::ifstream and std::ofstream
   • reading and writing in-memory strings
     Uses std::istringstream and std::ostringstream
   • using filebufs to stream data
     Uses std::filebuf
   • reading and writing to the same filebuf
     Wraps a single filebuf with both std::ifstream and std::ofstream

4. Standard Template Library (STL)

   • STL Structure Presentation, pptx
     Summarizes the containers, iterators, and algorithms
   • STL Containers Reference
     cppreference.com on containers
   • STL Containers Demos
     Simple use of most of the containers
   • STL Algorithms Reference
     cppreference.com on algorithms
   • STL Algorithms Demos
     Demos of a few of the algorithms
   • trimming strings with STL Algorithms
     Useful string utilities using algorithms
   • Invalid Iterators
     Illustrates an issue with vector use
   • Finding Duplicate Files with the help of STL containers
     Illustrates power of the STL
   • STL Details, pptx
     More details in reference format
   • STL Odds and Ends Presentation, pptx
     How to handle a few quirks of the STL container interfaces

5. Activity to prepare for Synchronous Discussion:

   • Find at least one place in your Project #3 or #4 code that loops through a collection, making modifications or collecting information from the elements. Replace that code with an STL Algorithm that accepts start and end iterators, and a callable object. You define code for the callable object to replace your original operations.

6. Lecture Take-aways:

   The most important things we discussed today were:

   • STL Details Presentation
   • STL Containers Demos