How come I can use strcmp without including <cstring> ?

Somehow my program still runs, eventhough my gut tells me that it shouldn't.

I've used the function strcmp and strcpy without using <cstring>. I've also used the functions atof, atol, and atoi with using <cstdlib>. Are these function included in <iostream> ? Or is this simply because GCC does not adhere to some standard that it is suppose to?

Some other (standard) header could have included those other headers.

Such behaviour is non-portable, however. Make sure you always include the right headers.

Also see this thread:

http://cboard.cprogramming.com/showthread.php?t=86634

does std:: pair apear in any other library besides utility? Just asking

It will almost certainly appear in <map> and <multimap>, since maps use pairs in their member function arguments and return types. I'm not sure if that is guaranteed by the standard explicitly though.

It's not. The standard guarantees that the things that are listed for that header appear. Nothing else.

As long as the standard headers are real files, there is no way around it. (I think. It might be that std::pair only appears in references, which would mean a forward declaration would suffice on a compiler that supports extern templates.) But the standard doesn't even guarantee that: the compiler could just as well use those names as triggers to make the symbols available and not include the file.

However, what I said above is subject to some dispute. For example, by my philosophy, this program is not standards-conformant:

Code:

---

#include <iostream>

int main()
{
  std::cout << "Hello, World!" << std::endl;
}

---

The reason is that std::endl is part of <ostream>, not <iostream>. It's not available.

Some people on c.l.c++.m and c.s.c++ argue that the above program should be compliant. Some disagree. In the end, all current compilers accept it.