C++: STL (Standard Template Library)

The container manages the storage space for its elements and provides member functions to access them, either directly or through iterators (reference objects with similar properties to pointers).

Containers replicate structures very commonly used in programming: dynamic arrays (vector), queues (queue), stacks (stack), heaps (priority_queue), linked lists (list), trees (set), associative arrays (map)...



Many containers have several member functions in common, and share functionalities. The decision of which type of container to use for a specific need does not generally depend only on the functionality offered by the container, but also on the efficiency of some of its members (complexity). This is especially true for sequence containers, which offer different trade-offs in complexity between inserting/removing elements and accessing them.

stack, queue and priority_queue are implemented as container adaptors. Container adaptors are not full container classes, but classes that provide a specific interface relying on an object of one of the container classes (such as deque or list) to handle the elements. The underlying container is encapsulated in such a way that its elements are accessed by the members of the container class independently of the underlying container class used.

Container class templates

Sequence containers:

vector

Vector (class template)

deque

Double ended queue (class template)

list	List (class template)

Container adaptors:

stack

LIFO stack (class template)

queue

FIFO queue (class template)

priority_queue

Priority queue (class template)

Associative containers:

set	Set (class template)

multiset

Multiple-key set (class template)

map	Map (class template)

multimap

Multiple-key map (class template)

bitset

Bitset (class template)