16 Library introduction [library]

This Clause describes the contents of the C++ standard library, how a well-formed C++ program makes use of the library, and how a conforming implementation may provide the entities in the library.

The following subclauses describe the method of description ([description]) and organization ([organization]) of the library.

[requirements], [support] through [thread], and [depr] specify the contents of the library, as well as library requirements and constraints on both well-formed C++ programs and conforming implementations.

Detailed specifications for each of the components in the library are in [support]–[thread], as shown in Table 23.

The operating system interface described in ISO/IEC/IEEE 9945:2009 is hereinafter called POSIX.

The language support library ([support]) provides components that are required by certain parts of the C++ language, such as memory allocation ([expr.new], [expr.delete]) and exception processing ([except]).

The concepts library ([concepts]) describes library components that C++ programs may use to perform compile-time validation of template arguments and perform function dispatch based on properties of types.

The diagnostics library ([diagnostics]) provides a consistent framework for reporting errors in a C++ program, including predefined exception classes.

The memory management library ([mem]) provides components for memory management, including smart pointers and scoped allocators.

The metaprogramming library ([meta]) describes facilities for use in templates and during constant evaluation, including type traits, integer sequences, and rational arithmetic.

The general utilities library ([utilities]) includes components used by other library elements, such as a predefined storage allocator for dynamic storage management ([basic.stc.dynamic]), and components used as infrastructure in C++ programs, such as tuples and function wrappers.

The strings library ([strings]) provides support for manipulating text represented as sequences of type char, sequences of type char8_t, sequences of type char16_t, sequences of type char32_t, sequences of type wchar_t, and sequences of any other character-like type.

The containers ([containers]), iterators ([iterators]), ranges ([ranges]), and algorithms ([algorithms]) libraries provide a C++ program with access to a subset of the most widely used algorithms and data structures.

The numerics library ([numerics]) provides numeric algorithms and complex number components that extend support for numeric processing.

The valarray component provides support for n-at-a-time processing, potentially implemented as parallel operations on platforms that support such processing.

The random number component provides facilities for generating pseudo-random numbers.

The time library ([time]) provides generally useful time utilities.

The localization library ([localization]) provides extended internationalization support for text processing.

The input/output library ([input.output]) provides the iostream components that are the primary mechanism for C++ program input and output.

They can be used with other elements of the library, particularly strings, locales, and iterators.

The regular expressions library ([re]) provides regular expression matching and searching.

The concurrency support library ([thread]) provides components to create and manage threads, including atomic operations, mutual exclusion, and interthread communication.