7.4.1 Using C++ standard library templates

The C++ standard library 'libstdc++' supplied with GCC provides a wide range of generic container classes such as lists and queues, in addition to generic algorithms such as sorting. These classes were originally part of the Standard Template Library (STL), which was a separate package, but are now included in the C++ standard library itself.

The following program demonstrates the use of the template library by creating a list of strings with the template list<string>:

#include <list>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>

using namespace std;

int
main ()
{
  list<string> list;
  list.push_back("Hello");
  list.push_back("World");
  cout << "List size = " << list.size() << '\n';
  return 0;
}

No special options are needed to use the template classes in the standard library; the command-line options for compiling this program are the same as before:

$ g++ -Wall string.cc
$ ./a.out 
List size = 2

Note that the executables created by g++ using the C++ standard library will be linked to the shared library 'libstdc++', which is supplied as part of the default GCC installation. There are several versions of this library--if you distribute executables using the C++ standard library you need to ensure that the recipient has a compatible version of 'libstdc++', or link your program statically using the command-line option -static.