Standard Library - Definition and Overview

In C++, the Standard Library is a collection of classes and functions, which are written in the core language. The Standard Library provides several generic containers, functions to utilise and manipulate these containers, function objects, generic strings and streams (including interactive and file I/O), support for some language features, and every day functions for tasks such as finding the square root of a number. The C++ Standard Library also incorporates the C Standard Library. Features of the Standard Library are declared within the std namespace.

Standard headers

The following files contain the declarations of the Standard Library.

Containers

• <bitset>
• <deque>
• <list>
• <map>
• <queue>
• <set>
• <stack>
• <vector>

General

• <algorithm>
• <functional>
• <iterator>
• <locale>
• <memory>
• <stdexcept>
• <utility>

Strings

• <string>

Streams and Input/Output

• <fstream>
• <ios>
• <iostream>
• <iosfwd>
• <iomanip>
• <istream>
• <ostream>
• <sstream>
• <streambuf>

Numerics

• <complex>
• <numeric>
• <valarray>

Language Support

• <exception>
• <limits>
• <new>
• <typeinfo>

C Standard Library

• <cassert>
• <cctype>
• <cerrno>
• <cfloat>
• <climits>
• <cmath>
• <csetjmp>
• <csignal>
• <cstdlib>
• <cstddef>
• <sstdarg>
• <ctime>
• <cstdio>
• <cstring>
• <cwchar>
• <cwctype>

References

• Bjarne Stroustrup: The C++ Programming Language, Addison-Wesley, ISBN 0-201-70073-5