DepartmentsDepartmentsWell, I finally did it. I joined the teeming millions around the globe and put up a Web site. Actually, my company Dinkumware, Ltd. did. And actually, we engaged the services of someone rather more competent than I at graphic design and Web arcana to do the magic bits. But it's there, anyway. Go to http://www.dinkumware.com for a bo peep, as they say in Sydney.
I try to avoid being too crassly commercial, at least when I wear my editor's or columnist's hat. My major reason for mentioning this new site (aside from some subliminal bragging) is to point out a resource that may be of general interest to CUJ readers. In addition to the usual promotional pieces on Dinkumware products, you will find at that site three HTML reference manuals. One is on the Standard C library, one is on the Standard Template Library, and one is on the complete draft Standard C++ library.
The Standard C Library manual has a separate page for each of the 18 headers in the Standard C library. Yes, the number is 18, not 15, because the description includes the facilities added with Amendment 1 to the C Standard approved in 1995. Additions are marked as such, for those (many) of you who lack either access to or interest in such new-fangled gewgaws. It also describes the additions to the Standard C library required by the draft C++ Standard. They too are marked as such, to avoid any confusion.
The Standard Template Library manual describes STL as it is being standardized. It is not just another description of the code made freely available by Hewlett-Packard.
The draft Standard C++ Library manual incorporates both of the above and a heckuva lot more. It describes the complete library that is being standardized by WG21/X3J16, in all its ambitious glory. If you think you know all about iostreams, for example, you should browse here for a spell. You might be surprised at what has been added while you haven't been looking.
It's a bit of a gamble making this material freely accessible. We ask visitors not to copy the manuals wholesale, since we make a living licensing intellectual property of this sort. So far the site visitors have been reasonably honest, I think, with a couple of notable exceptions. Our hope is that by making available a genuinely useful resource on the Web, we will get people to notice our commercial offerings as well. But like everyone else doing business on this new frontier, we've still got our fingers crossed.
P.J. Plauger