L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

C++ Standard Template Library

CSE 333 Summer 2018

Instructor: Hal Perkins

Teaching Assistants:
Renshu Gu William Kim Soumya Vasisht
 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

C++’s Standard Library

v C++’s Standard Library consists of four major pieces:
1) The entire C standard library
2) C++’s input/output stream library
• std::cin, std::cout, stringstreams, fstreams, etc.

3) C++’s standard template library (STL) ☜

• Containers, iterators, algorithms (sort, find, etc.), numerics

4) C+’+’s miscellaneous library

• Strings, exceptions, memory allocation, localization

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL Containers J
v A container is an object that stores (in memory) a
collection of other objects (elements)
§ Implemented as class templates, so hugely flexible
§ More info in C++ Primer §9.2, 11.2

v Several different classes of container

§ Sequence containers (vector, deque, list, ...)
§ Associative containers (set, map, multiset, multimap,
bitset, ...)
§ Differ in algorithmic cost and supported operations

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL Containers L
v STL containers store by value, not by reference
§ When you insert an object, the container makes a copy
§ If the container needs to rearrange objects, it makes copies
• e.g. if you sort a vector, it will make many, many copies
• e.g. if you insert into a map, that may trigger several copies
§ What if you don’t want this (disabled copy constructor or copying
is expensive)?
• You can insert a wrapper object with a pointer to the object
– We’ll learn about these “smart pointers” soon

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Our Tracer Class

v Wrapper class for an unsigned int value_
§ Default ctor, cctor, dtor, op=, op< defined
§ friend function operator<< defined
§ Also holds unique unsigned int id_ (increasing from 0)
§ Private helper method PrintID() to return
"(id_,value_)" as a string
§ Class and member definitions can be found in Tracer.h and
Tracer.cc

v Useful for tracing behaviors of containers

§ All methods print identifying messages
§ Unique id_ allows you to follow individual instances
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL vector
v A generic, dynamically resizable array
§ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/stl/vector/vector/
§ Elements are store in contiguous memory locations
• Elements can be accessed using pointer arithmetic if you’d like to
• Random access is O(1) time
§ Adding/removing from the end is cheap (amortized constant
time)
§ Inserting/deleting from the middle or start is expensive (linear
time)

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

vector/Tracer Example
vectorfun.cc
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include "Tracer.h"

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c;
vector<Tracer> vec;

cout << "vec.push_back " << a << endl;

vec.push_back(a);
cout << "vec.push_back " << b << endl;
vec.push_back(b);
cout << "vec.push_back " << c << endl;
vec.push_back(c);

cout << "vec[0]" << endl << vec[0] << endl;

cout << "vec[2]" << endl << vec[2] << endl;

return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL iterator
v Each container class has an associated iterator class (e.g.
vector<int>::iterator) used to iterate through
elements of the container
§ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/std/iterator/
§ Iterator range is from begin up to end
• end is one past the last container element!
§ Some container iterators support more operations than others
• All can be incremented (++), copied, copy-constructed
• Some can be dereferenced on RHS (e.g. x = *it;)
• Some can be dereferenced on LHS (e.g. *it = x;)
• Some can be decremented (--)
• Some support random access ([], +, -, +=, -=, <, > operators)
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

iterator Example
vectoriterator.cc
#include <vector>

#include "Tracer.h"

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c;
vector<Tracer> vec;

vec.push_back(a);
vec.push_back(b);
vec.push_back(c);

cout << "Iterating:" << endl;

vector<Tracer>::iterator it;
for (it = vec.begin(); it < vec.end(); it++) {
cout << *it << endl;
}
cout << "Done iterating!" << endl;
return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Type Inference (C++11)

v The auto keyword can be used to infer types
§ Simplifies your life if, for example, functions return complicated
types
§ The expression using auto must contain explicit initialization for
it to work // Calculate and return a vector
// containing all factors of n
std::vector<int> Factors(int n);

void foo(void) {
// Manually identified type
std::vector<int> facts1 =
Factors(324234);

// Inferred type
auto facts2 = Factors(12321);

// Compiler error here

auto facts3;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

auto and Iterators

v Life becomes much simpler!

for (vector<Tracer>::iterator it = vec.begin(); it < vec.end(); it++) {

cout << *it << endl;
}

for (auto it = vec.begin(); it < vec.end(); it++) {

cout << *it << endl;
}

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Range for Statement (C++11)

v Syntactic sugar similar to Java’s foreach
§for
General format:
( declaration : expression ) {
statements
}

§ declaration defines loop variable

§ expression is an object representing a sequence
• Strings, initializer lists, arrays with an explicit length defined, STL
containers that support iterators

// Prints out a string, one

// character per line
std::string str("hello");

for ( auto c : str ) {

std::cout << c << std::endl;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Updated iterator Example

vectoriterator_2011.cc
#include <vector>

#include "Tracer.h"

using namespace std;

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c;
vector<Tracer> vec;

vec.push_back(a);
vec.push_back(b);
vec.push_back(c);

cout << "Iterating:" << endl;

// "auto" is a C++11 feature not available on older compilers
for (auto& p : vec) {
cout << p << endl;
}
cout << "Done iterating!" << endl;
return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL Algorithms
v A set of functions to be used on ranges of elements
§ Range: any sequence that can be accessed through iterators or
pointers, like arrays or some of the containers
§ General form: algorithm(begin, end, ...);

v Algorithms operate directly on range elements rather

than the containers they live in
§ Make use of elements’ copy ctor, =, ==, !=, <
§ Some do not modify elements
• e.g. find, count, for_each, min_element, binary_search
§ Some do modify elements
• e.g. sort, transform, copy, swap
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Algorithms Example
vectoralgos.cc
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>
#include "Tracer.h"
using namespace std;

void PrintOut(const Tracer& p) {

cout << " printout: " << p << endl;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c;
vector<Tracer> vec;

vec.push_back(c);
vec.push_back(a);
vec.push_back(b);
cout << "sort:" << endl;
sort(vec.begin(), vec.end());
cout << "done sort!" << endl;
for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), &PrintOut);
return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL list
v A generic doubly-linked list
§ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/stl/list/
§ Elements are not stored in contiguous memory locations
• Does not support random access (e.g. cannot do list[5])
§ Some operations are much more efficient than vectors
• Constant time insertion, deletion anywhere in list
• Can iterate forward or backwards
§ Has a built-in sort member function
• Doesn’t copy! Manipulates list structure instead of element values

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

list Example
listexample.cc
#include <list>
#include <algorithm>
#include "Tracer.h"
using namespace std;

void PrintOut(const Tracer& p) {

cout << " printout: " << p << endl;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c;
list<Tracer> lst;

lst.push_back(c);
lst.push_back(a);
lst.push_back(b);
cout << "sort:" << endl;
lst.sort();
cout << "done sort!" << endl;
for_each(lst.begin(), lst.end(), &PrintOut);
return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

STL map
v One of C++’s associative containers: a key/value table,
implemented as a tree
§ http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/stl/map/
§ General form: map<key_type, value_type> name;
§ Keys must be unique
• multimap allows duplicate keys
§ Efficient lookup (O(log n)) and insertion (O(log n))
• Access value via name[key]
§ Elements are type pair<key_type, value_type> and are
stored in sorted order (key is field first, value is field second)
• Key type must support less-than operator (<)

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

map Example
mapexample.cc
void PrintOut(const pair<Tracer,Tracer>& p) {
cout << "printout: [" << p.first << "," << p.second << "]" << endl;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv) {

Tracer a, b, c, d, e, f;
map<Tracer,Tracer> table;
map<Tracer,Tracer>::iterator it;

table.insert(pair<Tracer,Tracer>(a, b));
table[c] = d;
table[e] = f;
cout << "table[e]:" << table[e] << endl;
it = table.find(c);

cout << "PrintOut(*it), where it = table.find(c)" << endl;

PrintOut(*it);

cout << "iterating:" << endl;

for_each(table.begin(), table.end(), &PrintOut);

return 0;
}
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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Unordered Containers (C++11)

v unordered_map, unordered_set
§ And related classes unordered_multimap,
unordered_multiset
§ Average case for key access is O(1)
• But range iterators can be less efficient than ordered map/set
§ See C++ Primer, online references for details

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Extra Exercise #1
v Using the Tracer.h/.cc files from lecture:
§ Construct a vector of lists of Tracers
• i.e. a vector container with each element being a list of
Tracers
§ Observe how many copies happen J
• Use the sort algorithm to sort the vector
• Use the list.sort() function to sort each list

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 L14: C++ STL CSE333, Summer 2018

Extra Exercise #2
v Take one of the books from HW2’s test_tree and:
§ Read in the book, split it into words (you can use your hw2)
§ For each word, insert the word into an STL map
• The key is the word, the value is an integer
• The value should keep track of how many times you’ve seen the word,
so each time you encounter the word, increment its map element
• Thus, build a histogram of word count
§ Print out the histogram in order, sorted by word count
§ Bonus: Plot the histogram on a log-log scale (use Excel, gnuplot,
etc.)
• x-axis: log(word number), y-axis: log(word count)

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