Extending the STL

摘要

When first learning STL, I was awestruck by it-not by how cool or revolutionary it was, but instead by how huge and confusing it was. I couldn't tell you why a list is better than a vector in such-and-such a situation, or what the differences were between input iterators and forward iterators. But something told me I should keep at it, and eventually my understanding grew. In learning the STL; one thing that struck me was Matt Austern's statement in Generic Programming and the STL that "to use the STL is to extend it".