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The STL: An Overview
Prerequisites: Class templates
The Standard Template Library is three things working
together: containers (vector, map, set, and others) that
store data, iterators that walk through a container uniformly,
and algorithms (sort, find, count, and dozens more) that
operate on any container through its iterators — meaning one
std::sort works identically on a vector, a deque, or a plain
array.
The next several lessons take containers, iterators, and algorithms in turn — together, they replace most of the by-hand data structures built in Learn C's Level 2 with production-tested, heavily optimized implementations.