Appendix B. Standard Headers

This book uses a small subset of the Standard Template Library (STL; also called the Standard Library). The standard header files we use are all listed here.

To use these classes and functions effectively, it is useful to know where to look for documentation.

Table B.1 lists standard header files. For some header files, there is a man page for the whole file. In other cases, you might find a man page for the individual function also.

Table B.1. Standard headers

Header file	Library	Man pages
C++ STL
string	STL strings type	std::string
sstream	stringstream, for writing to strings as if they are streams	std::stringstream
iostream	C++ standard stream library	std::ios, std::iostream
memory	C++ memory-related routines	std::bad_alloc, std::auto_ptr
C Standard Library
cstring, string.h	functions for C char* strings	string, strcpy, strcmp
cstdlib, stdlib.h	c Standard Library	random, srandom, getenv, setenv
cstdio, stdio.h	standard input/output	stdin, stdout, printf, scanf
cassert	assert macros	assert

If you are using Microsoft Developers Studio, the documentation for the standard libraries comes with the MSDN documentation.

For open-source platforms, it helps to have one but you don need a local copy of man or the man pages since there are many copies of the documentation^[1] available on the Web.

^[1] For examples, see cplusplus.com [http://www.cplusplus.com/ref/] or Dinkumware [http://www.dinkumware.com/manuals/reader.aspx?lib=cpp].

By default, the C++ Standard Library documentation might not be installed on your system. Search for the string libstdc with your favorite package manager, so you can install something like libstdc++5-3. 3-doc or libstdc++6-4.0-doc.