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Title: STL Tutorial and Reference Guide
       -- C++ Programming with the Standard Template Library
Author(s): David R. Musser, Atul Saini
Publisher: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, (800) 822-6339
Contact: Chris Guzikowski, (617) 944-3700 Ext. 2714, chrisgu@aw.com
Pages: 432
Price: $38.68 (hardcover)
ISBN: 0-201-63398-1

As Stepanov and Lee's Stand Template Library (STL) is incorporated into
ANSI/ISO C++ standard, anyone who is serious about C++ must be eager to
learn what it is all about. This book provides an oppotunity for them.

The book has three parts: part I is "an Tutorial Introduction to STL",
illustrating major STL components such as iterators, function objects,
generic algorithms, and so on with many short examples; part II
provides several much longer examples where many STL features are put
together in use; part III is a STL reference containing some
information not found in part I (e.g., in Generic Algorithm section,
each algorithm entry consists of "prototype", "description", and "time
complexity".)

This is what I did with the book so far: as I already learned a few
things about STL from an online document dated back to 1994, I just
browsed part I for anything that didn't look familiar to me. For that
part I found the examples helpful.

Then I proceeded to part II. Those examples are not very hard, but they
are not trivial either (of course, this is a subjective judgment.)
Each section deals with one problem, starting with the general idea to
solve the problem, followed by the complete code, and the part-by-part
explanations of the code. I found the explanations adequate, if not
abundant. From time to time, I had to turn to part I or III to
understand some algorithms, but that was expected, given the way I read
the book. The book is not to blame. If one want to know what programs
using STL look like, read these examples! Along the way the authors
also located a compiler bug, so I assume the code is reliable, although
I don't have the resource to run through them right now. I was glad
that the authors included a section addressing the issue of combining
OOP and STL, where they enhanced Stroustrup's drawing example with STL.

I didn't really read the part III (who would?), except looking up
information on some algorithms while reading part II. The reference is
organized in a way similar to part I, but the lack of cross-reference
got me into trouble once. In the section on sort() algorithms, one is
given two sort()'s (besides others): one takes a compare function
object as the third parameter and the other does not.  What is the
difference? This section says nothing about it. It turned out the
information was located in the "supersection" , so to speak, titled
"sort-related algorithms". Since this is a reference, it would be nice
if one can pick up the relevant information without reading the whole
thing sequentially, I think. Another problem I found is that the page
number of reference on bind1st and bind2nd is missing in the index. It
could be an isolated problem, though.

The typesetting leaves something to desire. Maybe it is just a personal
taste, but I prefer the typesetting in TCP/IP Illustrated, a book from
the same series, where code listings have a distinct look from the
text. The book under review would look better if the code was printed
in a smaller font, I think.

Overall, it is a good book for anyone to get started on the subject.
The authors have accomplished what the titles says, that is, a tutorial
and reference guide on STL.



--
Huayong

WWW home pages:                           Email:
http://www.math.umass.edu/~yang           yang@math.umass.edu