What's New

Release 3.3: June 8, 2000

• New feature: concept checks. The library now does better compile-time error checking to make sure that the types used to instantiate library templates conform to the templates' requirements.
• Removed two non-standard-conforming extensions: the second, defaulted template parameter in bitset, and the third, default template parameter in deque.
• Many bug fixes, performance enhancements, and compatibility improvements.

Release 3.2: April 22, 1999

• New feature: <valarray> header, as defined in section 26.3 of the C++ standard.
• <limits> header is now supported on compilers that lack support for constant initialization of static const data members, such as Microsoft v6.0.
• Performance improvements in copy for compilers that lack support for partial specialization of templates.
• Improved support for insert_iterator when used with hash tables and slist.
• Documentation bug fix: documentation now makes it clear which library features are standard and which are SGI extensions.
• Bug fixes.

Release 3.13: March 11, 1999

• Added a Frequently Asked Questions list.
• Bug fixes, particularly in multithreading support for non-SGI compilers.
• The at member function is now supported for the vector and deque classes. (It was previously supported only for string.)

Release 3.12: February 2, 1999

• Minor bug fixes.
• The <string> and <bitset> headers are now supported on compilers that lack full support for member templates and partial specialization, such as Microsoft v6.0.
• Code to support multithreading has been consolidated in a single file, so that system dependences are better isolated.

Release 3.11: July 21, 1998

• Minor bug fixes.
• Faster operator[] in map.
• Algorithmic improvements in find, find_if, and partition.
• The standard exception hierarchy is now usable on compilers that do not provide an <exception> header.

Release 3.1: June 9, 1998

• Standard-conforming string and bitset classes, and the standard exception hierarchy.
• Standard-conforming allocators, including the default allocator class allocator<T>. All containers now use standard allocators, and all containers now support allocators whose instances are distinct. Old-style allocators, like alloc, are still supported for backward compatibility.
• Algorithmic improvements in search.
• All sequences now support the resize and assign member functions. All sequences now properly support overloaded insert member functions and constructors in the presence of member templates.
• Bug fixes in rope, and minor bug fixes elsewhere. Minor changes for standard conformance.
• Standard-conforming auto_ptr class.
• Internal names, such as names of function and template parameters, have been changed so that they cannot conflict with user names (including user macros).

Release 3.01: October 31, 1997

Release 3.0: October 31, 1997

• Major reorganization of header files. Headers now have the names described in the draft C++ standard. (Old header names are provided as well for backward compatibility.) The new-style headers declare their contents in namespace std; the old-style headers do too, but they import those declarations into the global namespace with using declarations. So, for example, #include <vector.h> is roughly equivalent to #include <vector> followed by the declaration using std::vector;.

  Note that namespace std is only enabled for compilers whose support for namespaces is sufficient; this is controlled by the header <stl_config.h>.

• Bug fixes, and minor changes for standard conformance.

Release 2.03: September 9, 1997

• Bug fixes, most importantly in rope.
• New version of reverse_iterator that takes only a single template parameter, as described in the draft standard. (This relies on iterator_traits, so you can only use the new version of reverse_iterator if your compiler supports partial specialization.)
• New algorithms: find_first_of, search_n, find_end
• Changed the iterator tag classes so that they form an inheritance hierarchy.
• Added the -> operator to all predefined iterators (except for output iterators).

Release 2.02: July 31, 1997

• Bug fixes, most importantly in rope and deque.
• New feature: function object adaptors for member functions. This is a family of classes: mem_fun_t, mem_fun_ref_t, mem_fun1_t, mem_fun1_ref_t.

Release 2.01: June 30, 1997

Release 2.0: June 13, 1997

• Exception safety. All STL components are now exception safe.
• New container class: rope. A scalable string representation.
• New container class: slist. Singly linked lists.
• Member templates. If your compiler supports member templates, then you will be able to use the fully general form of containers' copy constructors and insert member functions.
• New mechanism for accessing iterators' associated type information: iterator_traits. (Note: you can only use iterator_traits if your compiler supports "partial specialization".) The algorithms count, count_if, and distance have been rewritten in terms of iterator_traits.
• Reimplementation of deque. deque has been completely rewritten, for higher performance.
• type_traits mechanism, which allows omission of null constructor and destructor calls.
• New temporary_buffer class. This was partially motivated by exception safety, but it is also more convenient and more efficient than the old get_temporary_buffer and return_temporary_buffer functions.
• New allocator, debug_alloc, which is useful for verifying the correctness of memory allocation and deallocation.
• New algorithms: copy_n, lexicographical_compare_3way, power, uninitialized_copy_n.
• Greater portability. The SGI STL can now be compiled using Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0, and Borland C++ 5.02; it should not be difficult to port it to any other compiler that has good support for templates. (Specifically, any compiler that has default template parameters.) Most compiler-specific code is isolated in the file stl_config.h.