This directory contains Hewlett-Packard's implementation of
the C++ Standard Template Library.
It is the February 7, 1995 version.
It has been extensively modified so it can be compiled by g++.
(Version 2.6.1 or newer is recommended.)
Some of these hacks are pretty ugly, but are needed to work around
bugs in g++ (which we are working on).
Thanks to Carsten Bormann <cabo@informatik.uni-bremen.de> for
coming up with many of these work-arounds.  However, I have
come up with alternate (possibly inferior!) work-arounds in some cases.

It is easy to crash g++ by using STL.  (I found the function-object
templates in function.h to be especially fruitful in that respect!)
***SO DON'T BOTHER SENDING BUG REPORTS THAT STL CAUSES G++ TO CRASH***,
or otherwise fails to compile it. unless you also have a fix or
improved work-around!!!  WE KNOW!

Also note that this is based on a pre-Draft Standard for C++.
Thinks are likely to change.  For example, the header file names
are very likely to change.  The Allocator interface will change.  Etc, etc.
CYGNUS MAKES NO COMMITTMENT (yet) TO SUPPORT BACKWARD COMPATIBILITY FOR STL.

For examples if things that should work, look in the ../tests directory.

DOCUMENTATION:
See http://www.cs.rpi.edu/~musser/stl.html on the World-Wide Web,
or anonymous ftp to butler.hpl.hp.com, directory stl, file sharfile.Z.

	--Per Bothner
Cygnus Support     bothner@cygnus.com
	
-----------
Here is Carsten Bormann's notes on his changes:

This is a set of seriously bletcherous hacks to HP's wonderful STL
library.  The objective is to hammer STL through GCC 2.6.1 (2.6.0
seems to work, too, until you run into one of its bugs) so that us
academic types can play with STL, not to make STL better in any way.

Many of these changes make the library much less efficient.  All
changes (except vector<bool> -- see below) are due to bugs (or
non-features) in GCC, not due to any problems in STL.  Do not judge
the performance of STL (code space, data space, compile time
complexity, run time complexity) from these hacks -- they will be much
better when GCC implements more of Standard C++.  May the authors of
STL forgive me.

The class templates generally have been hacked in the following ways:

1) Static data members have been eliminated, generally by making them
non-static members or member functions (both of which generally
seriously impairs performance -- e.g., each rb_tree iterator now
carries a copy of NIL since there is no other place to put it).  The
template list<> has suffered most.

Allocators are still static members, since I changed defalloc.h to
have static members only.  (This makes allocators less useful, but
still useable.)  (Note that a static member without data need not be
initialized.)

2) For member functions defined outside the class template, parameters
of type tmpl<T>::something have been changed.  In some cases, a class
derived from the type has been used; in some cases the function simply
has been made inline (again causing code bloat).

3) A number of function templates in iterator.h have been declared
again for derived classes defined by templates, usually by making them
friend functions and using the name injection feature of GCC.  I don't
understand the relevant sections of the WP, so I don't know if this
hack will cease to work in more conforming versions of GCC or become
unneccessary or simply STL won't work with standard C++.  Some of
the necessary friends may still be missing...

defalloc.h has lost much of its functionality: see above.

bool.h has been made ineffective, since GCC supports bool.

Finally, bit_vector has been changed into a proper specialization of
vector<bool>.
[Not in this libstdc++ release. -PB]

demo.cc and Makefile build a small demo program for a number of
features of STL.  This is not a test suite, so I certainly have not
found all my mistakes (could anyone in possession of such a test suite
please run it over these hacks?).  Send bug reports (that follow GNU
bug reporting conventions) to

	cabo@informatik.uni-bremen.de

Note that I generally do not have time to answer questions about STL.

Carsten Bormann
