Stronger guarantees for standard-library containers

The Standard Template Library (STL) [13, 14] is a library of generic algorithms and data structures that has been incorporated in the C++ standard [1] and ships with all modern C++ compilers. In the CPH STL project [4] our goal is to implement an enhanced edition of the STL. Initially, our focus was on time and space efficiency of the STL components, but now we are also focusing on safety, reliability, and usability of the components. In my talk, I briefly discussed four types of guarantees our library should be able to provide for its users: time optimality, iterator validity, exception safety, and space efficiency. In the CPH STL, every container is a bridge class that calls the functions available in the actual realization given as a template argument. For example, the interface of a meldable priority queue looks as follows [11]: