The C++ Standard Library is a collection of essential classes and functions used by
millions of C++ programmers on a daily basis. Being part of the ISO Standard of the
C++ Programming Language, an implementation is distributed with virtually every
C++ compiler. Code written with the C++ Standard Library is therefore portable across
compilers and target platforms.
The Library is more than 25 years old. Its initial versions were heavily inspired by
a (then proprietary) C++ library called the Standard Template Library (STL), so much
so that many still incorrectly refer to the Standard Library as “the STL.” The STL library
pioneered generic programming with templated data structures called containers and
algorithms, glued together with the concept of iterators. Most of this work was adapted by
the C++ standardization committee, but nevertheless neither library is a true superset of
the other.
