Thread: STL - Easy to Use or Not?

Is it just me, or does anyone else find 'STL' inconvenient to use?

I do use it, but find myself pouring through pages of overloaded functions, only to find what I want to do isn't supported, but everthing else I wouldn't of dream is.

For example, you can't do this:

std:string s = 'a';

Instead, after you have to do this:

std:string s(1, 'a');

or even this:

std:string s;
s += 'a';

I wrote some code recently which converted between doubles and strings using ostringstream and istringstream, while having some control over the formatting. The amount of work this wasn't true - I could have wrote my own stuff to do this far more easily.

Has any one figured out how to use locales with STL? Because I can't.

Thanks for the reply. Guess you find STL OK? I'm not saying that it's bad, I'm only suggesting that it seems to make hard work of doing some really simple things. Guess I'm in a minority, as usual.

>> I could have wrote my own stuff to do this far more easily
>Not with the same degree of flexibility

I meant I could have written my own float to string routines for the purposes at hand from scratch in less time that it took me to figure out how to use ostringstream and istringstream and get them working properly. For example, the exact meaning of precision various depending upon which STL documentation you read.

Thanks for the links about locales and streams. It's something I'll look into.

Since I figured out iterators I love STL, I hope I never write another data structure class again. (list, heap, stack, etc..)

Originally Posted by Davros

For example, you can't do this:

std:string s = 'a';

But you can do this:

Code:

std::string s = "a";

Just use " instead of '. You just need to get used to things I guess.

>Just use " instead of '. You just need to get used to things I guess.

That wasn't the point. I was using this as an example of how certain very basic features are absent/overlooked in STL. I would have thought a constructor which accepts a single char in a string class is very important. In any case, your suggestion isn't always be possible - I wasn't just picking on a pedantic point.

>yes go ahead and flame me as you will

I wasn't intending to flame anyone.

And I wasn't really asking for help with how to understand STL.

I just thought it would make a good topic for discussion.

But thanks for the replies.

I don't think it's complicated to handle strings, convert numbers, printing etc.

But yesterday I thought that it'd be possible to overload ostream to create a nice socket class. I didn't quite figure out how to overload ostream, it looked quite complicated.

Anyway, now it struck me that doing this would be possible:

Code:

class Socket
{
//...
template<typename T)
Socket& operator<<(const T& data)
{
	std::stringstream s;
	s << data;
	sendDataToConnection(data.str());
	return *this;
} 
};

I really like the STL. It should be larger, though.

Code:

 
std::string s = 'p';		  //It is very strange that this doesn't work

I think that this is also an excellent book.

>I'm trying to connect to irc.dal.net but no success. Which port should I use?
6667. But DALnet isn't very active, especially not our channel. I prefer to frequent Undernet or EFnet in #c and #c++, as do a few other members of Cprogramming. If you want, stop by there and look for Robc.