MFC Programmer's SourceBook : Thinking in C++
Bruce Eckel's Thinking in C++, 2nd Ed Contents | Prev | Next

Summary

Container classes are an essential part of object-oriented programming; they are another way to simplify and hide the details of a program and to speed the process of program development. In addition, they provide a great deal of safety and flexibility by replacing the primitive arrays and relatively crude data structure techniques found in C.

Because the client programmer needs containers, it’s essential that they be easy to use. This is where the template comes in. With templates the syntax for source-code reuse (as opposed to object-code reuse provided by inheritance and composition) becomes trivial enough for the novice user. In fact, reusing code with templates is notably easier than inheritance and composition.

Although you’ve learned about creating container and iterator classes in this book, in practice it’s much more expedient to learn the containers and iterators that come with your compiler or, failing that, to buy a library from a third-party vendor. [41] The standard C++ library includes a very complete but nonexhaustive set of containers and iterators.

The issues involved with container-class design have been touched upon in this chapter, but you may have gathered that they can go much further. A complicated container-class library may cover all sorts of additional issues, including persistence (introduced in Chapter 15) and garbage collection (introduced in Chapter 11), as well as additional ways to handle the ownership problem.


[41] See, for example, Rogue Wave, which has a well-designed set of C++ tools for all platforms.

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