C++ Standard Library Overview

All C++ library entities are declared or defined in one or more standard headers. This implementation includes two additional headers, <hash_map> and <hash_set>, that are not required by the C++ Standard. For a complete list of headers that this implementation supports, see Header Files Reference.

A freestanding implementation of the C++ library provides only a subset of these headers:

<cstdarg>
<cstddef>
<cstdlib> (declaring at least the functions abort, atexit, and exit)
<exception>
<limits>
<new>

The C++ library headers have two broader subdivisions:

• iostreams conventions.

• C++ Standard Library Reference conventions.

This section contains the following sections:

• Using C++ Library Headers

• C++ Library Conventions

• iostreams Conventions

• C++ Program Startup and Termination

• Safe Libraries: C++ Standard Library

• Checked Iterators

• Debug Iterator Support

• C++ Standard Library Reference

• Thread Safety in the C++ Standard Library

• stdext Namespace

• Regular Expressions (C++)

For more information about Visual C++ run-time libraries, see CRT Library Features.

See also

C++ Standard Library