STLplus C++ Library Collection - Versions and the Change Log
Author: Andy Rushton

# STLplus C++ Library Collection

Website Collection

# Change Log

- Introduction
- Changes from Version 3.14 to 3.15
- Changes from Version 3.13 to 3.14
- Changes from Version 3.12 to 3.13
- Changes from Version 3.11 to 3.12
- Changes from Version 3.10 to 3.11
- Changes from Version 3.9 to 3.10
- Changes from Version 3.8 to 3.9
- Changes from Version 3.7 to 3.8
- Changes from Version 3.6 to 3.7
- Changes from Version 3.5 to 3.6
- Changes from Version 3.4 to 3.5
- Changes from Version 3.3 to 3.4
- Changes from Version 3.2 to 3.3
- Changes from Version 3.1 to 3.2
- Changes from Version 3.0 to 3.1
- Changes from Version 2 to 3.0

## Introduction

This section is an attempt to document all the changes made to the STLplus library. However, the change log has been restarted for version 3 of the library since the changes for this version are huge. Therefore only the changes since then have been documented.

## Changes from Version 3.14 to 3.15

### Clang Build and Recognition of the Clang Compiler

Experiments on FreeBSD (the TrueOS distribution) confirm that STLplus builds with clang instead of Gnu gcc. Small changes, such as the reintroduction of a small number of exception specifications mentioned below were necessary, but no functional changes were needed. The portability/build.cpp utilities now recognises a clang build and correctly identifies the compiler and version.

### Removed throw specifications

STLplus has always had throw specifications (also known as exception specifications), e.g. throw(exception1,exception2), after function declarations so that both the compiler and user know what exceptions the function can throw.

However, in C++11 the use of throw specifications is deprecated. This started to show up as compiler warnings in gcc v7.2. I have decided to go with the spirit of C++11 and removed all of the throw specifications from STLplus. Where possible in the headers I have turned them into a comment so there is still some user information about what exceptions might be thrown by a function.

I have left throw specifications on exception classes derived from system exceptions because otherwise I was seeing compiler errors due to the derivative having a different throw specification than its base class.

## Changes from Version 3.13 to 3.14

### Scrapped support for old compilers

Traditionally, the STLplus code has been littered with macros to allow for differences in support for C++ features between compilers. This was always difficult to maintain. The fixes are localised in each library to a single header called <library>_fixes.hpp.

I have decided to scrap support for old compilers that require these work-arounds. These are:

- Visual Studio v6
- Borland v5.5
- gcc v2.xx

This decision has enabled significant simplifications to the code and now nearly all the fixes are gone from the code - it is almost exactly the same on all platforms and all compilers. It is a relief at last to see C++ standardisation reaching this point.

### Added at() and at_pointer() methods to containers/hash

Patch submitted by DJDM:

Added hash::at() and hash::at_pointer() methods to get the value associated with a key directly, avoiding the use of iterators. The motivation was to avoid a problem with iterators which are not thread-safe, but these are also generally useful functions.

The hash::at() method has the same functionality as the hash::operator[] method in read-only mode, but does not have the catch that in read-write mode, [] creates a new value if the key is not found. The at() method throws an exception instead when the key is not found. The at_pointer() method returns a pointer to the value, rather than a reference and returns null if the key is not found.

### Reworked portability/dprintf

This component was written originally to avoid the buffer-overrun problem of sprintf, it formats text in the same way as sprintf but into a std::string.

This was written originally to unpick the format string and use sprintf in a controlled way that ensured buffer overrun could not happen. It was rewritten a few years ago to use platform-specific functions that did their own low-level memory allocation, eliminating the need to unpick the format string. This solution was non-standard but used commonly available functions. However, one of these common functions (vasprintf) has been removed from some versions of the C runtime (specifically Cygwin) so I have written a more standard-conformant version using vsnprintf to print to a buffer.

Note: there are local copies of these functions in strings/string_float and strings/string_utilities which were added to eliminate a dependency from strings library to portability library. These have been changed to the new implementation as well.

## Changes from Version 3.12 to 3.13

### Reworked containers->digraph::path_exists algorithm

Bug reported by Simone D: The old digraph::path_exists algorithm was incorrect - it would stop searching for a path if an arc pointed to an already-visited node but before visiting any sibling arcs which might have been candidate paths.

I have rewritten the path_exists algorithm using a simpler method.

### Reworked portability->file_system

This is a minor bug-fix so that paths are simplified more consistently. For example "/.." can be simplified to "/".

Note: The simplification of paths used in file_system is a naive algorithm, it removes ".." elements on the assumption that none of the path is made of links, so that "/root/element/.." always maps onto "/root". This is not necessarily true.

### Fixed bug in IDE files

Some of the IDE project files still contained references to source files strings/print_address.hpp/cpp and strings/string_address.hpp/cpp which are obsolete - these functions were merged into other source files at the last release. These references have been removed.

## Changes from Version 3.11 to 3.12

### Added IDE files for Visual Studio 2013

These are a simple conversion of the VS 2012 project files, but have their own IDE folder so that they can be kept separate for users running more than one version of Visual Studio

### Added string formatting for long long types

Patch submitted by DJDM - extend the string formatting functions to support long long types.

### Fixed macro declaration in subprocesses

On OS-X the option for preventing a subprocess read from triggering a signal has a different name from other Unix-like OSs. Fix supplied by Ingwie.

### Added more methods to ntree

The ntree class is an ordered tree, but feedback has indicated that it is lacking in some methods for interchanging integer offsets of children with their iterators and manipulating the order of the tree once it has been built. These operations are possible, but difficult and should be built-in.

So, the following methods have been added:

- child_offset - find the integer offset of a child given its iterator
- reorder - move a child to a new position in the node's child list
- swap - swap two children in the node's child list

See the documentation for ntree to see how these are used.

### Added move operation to digraph

There is now a method called move in the digraph class which allows a whole graph to be moved into another graph, merging the two graphs. All arc connectivity is preserved in the move and all iterators to any nodes or arcs in the moved graph will continue to be valid and work.

### Added owns operation to digraph

You can now test whether an iterator is owned by a graph and therefore can be used with it by using the owns method. The method declaration is:

    bool digraph::owns(iterator);

Note that a null iterator is not owned by any object. Valid or end iterators are owned and may only be used with their owner object.

## Changes from Version 3.10 to 3.11

### Added erase_children method to ntree

The option of erasing all the children of a node but keeping the node was missing from the ntree class, so I've added a method called erase_children.

### Added erase_child synonym for erase to ntree

Previous versions allowed a single child to be deleted with the erase(i,offset) method. I've given this a synonym of erase_child for consistency with the new erase_children method. You can use either according to your preference.

### Added breadth_first_traversal method to ntree

Implemented a breadth-first traversal algorithm as a method of the ntree class. This method returns a vector of iterators in traversal order. The traversal algorithm is really too complex to implement as a new kind of iterator.

This approach is consistent with the digraph class which implements complex algorithms as methods returning vectors of iterators as results.

### Fixed bug in IP Sockets for Visual Studio

A bug got introduced caused by a mismatch between the codes for the Posix codes EINPROGRESS etc. and the Windows sockets variants WSAEINPROGRESS etc. I had assumed that Microsoft had mapped one set onto the other (previous versions of Visual Studio didn't define the Posix codes at all).

The bug only shows itself with the Visual Studio compiler - so for example using MingW to compile a native Windows program works.

Unfortunately it also shows up a bug in the test pack (actually, two) so the problem didn't get caught in testing. This is why the bug made it out into the field.

## Changes from Version 3.9 to 3.10

### Fixed iterator bug when using algorithms

The STLplus iterators gave a compiler error when used with standard algorithms such as std::find. I have made the iterators inherit from std::iterator to fix this.

### Eliminated compiler warnings in 64-bit mode.

STLplus has supported 64-bit builds for a long time, but gave a number of compiler warnings. I have eliminated these warnings so the library collection should now compile cleanly in both 32-bit and 64-bit modes.

### Added support for 64-bit platforms in Visual Studio 2012 Project Files

I have added the 64-bit target as an option in the Visual Studio 2012 project files. So STLplus can now be compiled in either Win32 mode or x64 mode.

### Added support for Visual Studio 2012

There are now project files for Visual Studio 2012 as well as 2010. Pick the correct one for the version of the compiler you are using.

Developers: there is now an IDE directory in the tests directory which contains separate project files for the different Visual Studio versions.

### Recreated project files for Visual Studio 2010

There were inconsistencies in the Visual Studio 2010 project files which showed up when converting them to 2012 project files. So I have regenerated the project files from scratch.

### Changed Linux to GNU/Linux

It is technically incorrect to label GNU/Linux as Linux. Linux is the Kernel, whereas GNU is the OS and both deserve credit. So I have changed the documentation, code and build tools to use the correct OS name of GNU/Linux.

This also means that the build subdirectory is now e.g. GNULINUX-i686-debug rather than LINUX-i686-debug.

### Ported to gNewSense

The gNewSense distribution of GNU/Linux is a pure free software distribution. I have tested STLplus on this platform and confirmed that it works correctly. The only limitation is that you must install the development headers for the "ltdl" library, i.e. package "libltdl-dev" to get the dynalinker component to build.

## Changes from Version 3.8 to 3.9

### Factored the find method in the hash table

The basic find algorithm was inefficient - so DJDM implemented a faster find method for internal use only.

### Fixed missing this->

Some of the containers referenced internal methods without the `this->` prefix. This is now required by the latest version of g++, so I have added the required prefix in all cases where the compiler raised an error.

## Changes from Version 3.7 to 3.8

### Fixed bug in digraph relating to the removal of the first/last node or arc

A user (dark_knight_ita) reported a bug in digraph whereby removing the first or last node or arc left the internal pointers pointing at deleted memory.

This has been corrected by a patch also provided by the user.

### Make containers/simple_ptr and containers/smart-ptr double-destruct-proof

DJDM reported a situation in which a simple_ptr had been double-destructed, causing a crash. OK, double-destruction should never happen anyway, but it is also simple to make these pointer classes proof against this as well.

DJDM contributed the double-destruct proofing of simple_ptr and I (AJR) adapted this for smart_ptr. This code only deals with avoiding double-destruction issues, it does not allow method-based access of a destroyed object.

### Re-added a bug fix to containers/ntree

The ntree::cut method had a bug (reported by sacbor) where the old method name set_new_owner was used when the renamed method change_owner should have been used. This bug was fixed in v3.6 but seems to have crept back in, possibly in the rework of ntree which was done for v3.7. So I've fixed it again.

## Changes from Version 3.6 to 3.7

### Rework of simple_ptr type conversion methods to work with gcc

Contributed by DJDM.

GCC is a little more rigid with it's types when it comes to using derivative template types being returned from template functions of a template. It is also a bit more rigid when it comes to accessing the private members of one instance of a template from another instance.

### Moved Project Files to Separate /ide Directory

The project files for various IDEs are multiplying. So to manage these files better, I have created a separate top-level directory to contain them. There is a separate sub-directory for each supported IDE.

At present the following IDEs are supported:

bcb6
  Borland C++ Builder v6 (a.k.a. Embarcadero RAD Suite v8)
vs2010
  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 (v10)
vs6
  Microsoft Visual Studio v6 - A baseline from which other versions can be supported

There is a project file for building STLplus as 5 separate libraries and another for building the single monolithic library.

The gcc make system has not been changed and the Makefiles are still local to each folder in the build. This works better in my opinion for command-line make.

### Added persistence and print/to_string to the STL shared_ptr

There is now support in the persistence library and in the strings library for the std::shared_ptr class. This is only supported if it is a true c++0x version of shared_ptr - that is, it is in the std:: namespace.

I don't support std::tr1::shared_ptr nor boost::shared_ptr.

In Visual Studio 2010, std::shared_ptr is available as standard.

In gcc version 4.5 (I'm not sure the earliest version), it is enabled by the gcc option -std=c++0x or by running make as:

    make CXXFLAGS=-std=c++0x

In Borland (Embarcadero) C++ Builder, std::shared_ptr is not available.

In order to support this, I've made internal changes to the persistence context classes and to the implementation of persistence for smart_ptr, simple_ptr, digraph and ntree. However, these have no impact on user code and there is no change in the persistence file format.

### docs/persistent_examples.html

Added downloadable code for some of the persistence examples.

### strings/print_pair.tpp and strings/print_map.tpp: Bug fixes

A couple of bugs fixed related to the conversion from STLplus 2. These only showed when trying to compile a program that uses these functions.

### portability/ip_sockets.cpp: Visual Studio 10 fixes

Visual Studio now defines constants such as EINPROGRESS so I no longer need to define these. However, I still define them for older versions of Visual Studio.

### portability/file_system.cpp: Clarified definition of file and folder

The functions for differentiating between a file and a folder did not handle 'other' filesystem objects correctly. I have now defined a file to be a regular file (any OS), symbolic link (Unix only), socket (Unix only) or named pipe (any OS). A folder is defined as just a directory (any OS). Character devices (any OS) and block devices (Unix only) are neither files nor folders.

### Makefile: fixed path problems

Two makefiles source/Makefile and tests/Makefile, relied on the current directory ('.') being on the path, which for me it always is. However, this caused make to fail for other users. The makefiles have been fixed so they do not rely on this.

## Changes from Version 3.5 to 3.6

### Switched to Visual Studio 10 (2010)

Visual Studio 10 Express Edition is now the preferred offering from Microsoft. Converting the solution and project files from Visual Studio 9 overwrote them, so now there are only Visual Studio 10 solutions and projects.

In principle I could rename these to support both simultaneously, but I will wait and see if there is a demand before investing the time and effort to do so.

### Made internals of subprocess and async_subprocess protected

These fields were private so that derived classes couldn't access them. This was orignally chosen to hide the platform-specific nature of the internals. However, there are occasions when a subclass needs to access these fields, so they are now protected.

Change requested/contributed by DJDM.

### Bug Fix - Declaration of environ incorrect for NetBSD

On some platforms the external variable environ has to be declared before use. The declaration was accidentally moved inside the stlplus namespace. This doesn't show as a problem on other platforms because they supply system declarations of this variable. However, on NetBSD the system declaration is missing and this shows up the scoping problem.

The problem has been solved by simply moving the external declaration back into global scope where it belongs.

### Bug Fix - Crash in portability/ip_sockets due to signals on Gnu/Linux

Bug fix contributed by DJDM

On Gnu/Linux, occasionally, if a socket disconnects remotely between the points at which you ask for send_ready and actually doing the send, then the send will fail, but also on Gnu/Linux sends the SIGPIPE signal, which kills the program if it is unhandled - most of the time. As the return of -1 is all you need from the send function, it's best to set it not to generate the SIGPIPE in the first place, which is done by adding the MSG_NOSIGNAL flag to the send calls.

### Tidy-up of portability/build Reporting

You can use the portability/build functions to report which version of compiler and build options were used to build STLplus. I've tidied this up and provided more functions to get parts of the build string.

### Bug Fix - Crash in portability/file_system

The getcwd function returns the C-string path to the current directory. This is then used to construct a std::string. However, getcwd can very rarely return a null pointer, which crashes the std::string constructor. I've fixed the code so that a null return value is converted into an empty string.

### Minor Tidy-up of portability/subprocesses

Some of the error handling was inconsistently handled in the subprocess classes, so I've worked through systematically adding error handling in a consistent way.

I've also added get_variables methods to the subprocess classes so you can examine the environment of the subprocess.

### Added < operator to containers/foursome and containers/triple

Fix contributed by DJDM

Having operator< allows these classes to be used in maps and sets. They are defined in terms of the operator< only for each of the contained types.

### Rework of containers/ntree

The ntree container was lacking a set of methods for building trees out of other trees without copying the contents. This is inefficient. I have added a set of move methods which move the argument tree into the target tree, destroying the argument tree in the process. These complement the insert methods that add subtrees in the same way, but copy them first.

In the process, I've deprecated the append method in favour of an insert or move with no offset, which defaults to the append functionality.

## Changes from Version 3.4 to 3.5

### Added monolithic build option

You can now merge the libraries together into one large library - known as a monolithic build of STLplus. The simplest way of doing this is to use a shell - DOS shell on Windows, bash shell on Gnu/Linux or other Unix - and cd to the `stlplus3/source` directory. There, run the script `make_monolithic`. This copies all of the source code into the directory. Then you will find there are alternative project files and build scripts in the source directory to allow you to use STLplus as a monolithic library.

### Re-added simple_ptr

The simple_ptr variants of the smart_ptr classes were originally in v2 of STLplus but were not added to v3 because I was unsure whether to have two different ways of doing the same thing (something I do not generally agree with). However, the author (Dan Milton) has convinced me that they should be in the library because they are sufficiently different from smart_ptr.

The simple_ptr classes have been rewritten in the same style as smart_ptr and share the same set of copy functors to implement the copy/clone/nocopy semantics. To achieve this, the copy functors have been factored out into the header copy_functors.hpp.

Support functions for simple_ptr classes have been added to the persistence and strings libraries.

### Reduced the number of disabled warnings for the Borland compiler

It has been reported that some of the pragmas in, for example containers_fixes.hpp which disable warnings in Borland compilers are now unnecessary. I have reduced this to a set of two:

8026
  Functions with exception specifications are not expanded inline
8027
  Functions with xxx are not expanded inline

These fit into the category of warnings you cannot get rid of which erroneously suggest there is a problem in STLplus when the problem is in the compiler. I dislike such warnings which raise false alarms, so they will remain disabled.

### Added hash::erase(iterator)

This method, which allows a hash element to be erased via its iterator, has been added for compatibility with std::map.

### Re-added hash::debug_report()

This function was present in STLplus v2, but was removed temporarily due to the removal of TextIO from STLplus. The intention was to re-add it soon after by porting the function to use IOStreams, but it got forgotten in the changeover. It has now been re-added, ported to IOStreams.

### Fixed bug in smart_ptr

There was a bug reported in smart_ptr whereby a gcc-compiled application would crash due to a missing assignment operator in the baseclass smart_ptr_base. This bug was introduced in smart_ptr's redesign for STLplus v3.0 when the common base class was introduced.

### Rework of Internet Sockets

Previous versions of STLplus had an object-oriented interface to TCP sockets, that is sockets which have been configured for TCP communications. This subsystem (part of portability) has been redesigned to provide three subsystems:

ip_sockets.hpp
  This is a low-level subsystem that provides an object-orientated and platform independent interface to IP (Internet Protocol) sockets. It hides the ugly C interface of sockets and the platform-specifics. However, it is not really intended to be used directly (though it can), so it is not documented separately. Instead it is the base class for the TCP and UDP interfaces.
tcp_sockets.hpp
  This is the TCP sockets interface that used to be part of STLplus, completely rewritten to use the ip_sockets layer but providing the same interface as before.
udp_sockets.hpp
  This is a new interface to UDP sockets. UDP is a simpler, faster protocol to TCP and is used for many streaming applications. It is implemented using the ip_sockets layer.

## Changes from Version 3.3 to 3.4

### Change in terminology

The ntree is a tree data structure where each node can have any number of children. This is technically not an n-ary tree as I thought when I wrote it. An n-ary tree has exactly n children on each node, whereas my ntree class can have any number of children. Furthermore, trees can be classed as rooted or unrooted depending on whether it has a single root node. So the documentation now refers to it as a rooted tree. That is, it is an arbitrary-branched tree with a single root node.

The code has not changed - in particular the class is still called ntree - because I don't see the point in breaking existing code over a slight terminology mix-up.

### Fixes for gcc v4.3

As has happened several times in the past, a new version of gcc has tighter rules than older versions and caused some minor problems in the code to be revealed. There are two types: (1) use of C++ features that were common practice when STLplus was originally developed, but which have been deprecated; (2) missing system includes, since some system files used to be implicitly included.

Both STLplus v3.4 and all the tests now compile correctly with gcc v4.3 as well as older versions.

### Porting to Borland Compilers

The old STLplus v2 was ported to Borland v5.5 by a user. However, STLplus v3 has never been ported.

The libraries have been modified to support both the v5.5 compiler (the Free Command-line Tools) and the v5.8 compiler (Turbo C++ 2006 Explorer).

This has required the following changes:

- Elimination of the use of 'typename' temporaries (i.e. names of types declared in template classes) in expressions - v5.5 only supports typenames in declarations
- Support for the typename keyword in v5.8 but not v5.5
- Suppression of more warnings
- Rewriting 'ttt xxx = *this' as 'ttt xxx(*this) because old compilers such as v5.5 interpret assignment of *this to mean overriding of memory management
- Reworked element access of bitset - use xxx.test(i) not xxx[i] which is broken in v5.5
- Expanded print_smart_ptr and smart_ptr_to_string into three template functions each because v5.5 could not resolve the function when the function parameter was a basetype of the actual parameter
- Extra #includes to system headers which other compilers resolve implicitly
- Work-around bug in v5.5's implementation of std::string which stops a copy at a null termination (incorrect) rather than using the size parameter (correct). This broke stlplus::inf which uses std::string as a binary byte store which therefore must be able to contain zeros
- Fixed bug in library manager where operator<<'s body was in global scope. It would appear that other compilers fix this problem implicitly

## Changes from Version 3.2 to 3.3

The purpose of this release is to change the status from beta to stable. There are no code changes and the only difference is a correction in the copyright notice.

### Fixed Copyright statement

The copyright statement now gives credit to Southampton University, UK, who initially funded my work on this project and therefore have part-ownership of the STLplus project. The copyright statement now reads:

    Copyright: (c) Southampton University 1999-2004
               (c) Andy Rushton           2004-2008

This has no effect on licensing.

## Changes from Version 3.1 to 3.2

### Added dynaload class to portability library

This class is a platform-independent and object-oriented interface to the dynamic library loader functions.

### Softened dependencies on the portability library

I have modified the persistence and strings libraries so that the dependency on the portability library is soft not hard. This means that both libraries can be compiled without the portability library if you don't want persistence or printing support for the portability/inf type.

### Made the Containers Library an 'Include-only' Library

The containers library had only one component that needed compiling - the rest of the library is template code that gets included in your code. I have inlined the one component (the exception classes) so that the library is entirely headers and does not need compiling.

This change also required changes to the makefiles project, so if you are using my makefiles you will need to download the latest version of that too (i.e. at least v1.4).

### Use ANSI-Specific Functions on Windows

The STLplus library does not support Unicode (for good reasons - the wide string class is too weakly defined to have a common cross-platform interpretation). However, it should be usable in a system that does. I have modified the Windows system calls to always call the ANSI variants and use narrow strings even when compiled with the UNICODE macro enabled.

### File Mode Function Removed

The function file_set_mode has been removed because it is non-portable and there's no way to make it portable. It was legacy code from a Unix-only project and didn't work on Windows. For the time being, use the platform specific functions for this. In the future I may re-introduce a limited functionality interface to the file modes once I can work out the common subset.

## Changes from Version 3.0 to 3.1

### Bug in subsystems/cli_parser

The macro END_CLI_DEFINITIONS contained an error with namespaces - so it would only work if you were "using namespace stlplus". This should now work when using the stlplus:: prefix notation as well.

### Bug in subsystems/cli_parser

There was a bug related to the use of a definition_t to define a command-line argument. The bug caused the cli_parser to crash with a segmentation fault due to a null pointer being passed to a std::string.

### Built-in messages in subsystems/message_handler

The minimum set of messages (for the cli_handler) has now been built-in to the message_handler so that applications can more easily be built with no message-file handling.

### Bug in Windows port of quoted command-line arguments in portability/subprocesses.

This bug resulted in a quoted string being converted by the argument_vector class into a doubled-up string - i.e. "./fred" would get converted into "..//ffrreedd". The bug only manifested on Windows.

### Change to kill semantics in portability/subprocesses

A bug fix was submitted by Alistair Low to enable the subprocess classes to kill a whole subprocess tree rather than just the parent process. I have yet to confirm whether this is the behaviour of the Unix port - it should be.

### Bug in portability/debug

One of the macros in the debug header had a typo - which broke the debug utilities. The symptom was in DEBUG_TRACE which would result in a compilation error due to a reference to the undefined class stlplus_debug_trace. This has been fixed.

### Change to implementation of portability/debug

The string formatting was being done by string-stream classes. I have rewritten it to use the more efficient portability/dprintf.

### Changes to subsystems/cli_parser use of subsystems/ini_manager

The CLI Parser loads default values from the Ini Manager. However, in previous versions, it was possible for a typo to mean that an option was ignored. I have now added error checking so that all variables in the relevant section of the Ini Manager are recognised as command-line options.

An extra error message has been added to messages/stlplus_messages.txt to report this error.

### Changes to subsystems/ini_manager to improve error reporting

The Ini Manager now keeps track of which line in the Ini file a value comes from, so that error reporting can report the file name and line number of an error. The method ini_manager::variable_linenumber has been added for this purpose.

### Bug Fix in portability/subprocesses

There was a bug in the quoting code for Windows command-lines which resulted in quote marks being added after every character in a string that needed quoting (i.e. contained special characters). This has been fixed.

## Changes from Version 2 to 3.0

### Split the library into a Collection

The original STLplus was a single, rather large, library. It has now been split into 5 libraries. So STLplus is now referred to as a Library Collection, containing within it the STLplus containers, portability, persistence, subsystems and strings libraries.

### Added the stlplus Namespace

All of the components in the STLplus library collection now have their own namespace - stlplus. Thus, the smart_ptr class is now stlplus::smart_ptr.

### Removed TextIO

STLplus had it's own I/O subsystem for historical reasons. That was OK when I was the only user, but a bit much for new users to be expected to accept. I decided that TextIO had to go, but needed to wait for other major changes to justify a change that makes the library not backwards compatible.

STLplus version 3 does not have the TextIO subsystem any more - all functions using TextIO have been rewritten to use IOStream.

### Removed string_arithmetic

The string_arithmetic package was an anachronism - it was part of another project which seemed suitable for inclusion into STLplus, but now seems not to fit. So I have removed it.

### Renamed error_handler to message_handler

The old name error_handler I think confused people as to the purpose of this component. Since STLplus 3 is not compatible with previous versions, I am taking this opportunity to rename it to better reflect its purpose - message_handler.

### Safe Iterators

Iterators in the STL are badly designed - there are several major pitfalls with using them as a result of their design. However, I wanted STLplus to feel like the STL to make it easier to use, so felt I should use the iterator concept despite the problems associated with them. Some of the STLplus components therefore also use iterators.

In STLplus 2 I included some error checking for misuse of iterators. In STLplus 3 I have completed the job - so I have termed the STLplus iterators safe iterators.

### Changed Interfaces to enable Namespace Support

The old STLplus used a technique for writing template functions that required external resources to be in the global namespace. This approach is not compatible with placing all of the STLplus into a separate namespace. All these functions have been rewritten to take an extra parameter so that those external resources are now passed as parameters.

This rewrite applies to the persistence library and the strings library.

### Persistence Functions Renamed

STLplus 2 relied on overloading the functions dump and restore to implement persistence. However, because of the redesign of the functions discussed above, persistence functions are now passed as parameters to other persistence functions. To avoid ambiguity, all persistence functions now have unique names - dump_type and restore_type. See the persistence library for more information.

Note: the persistence file format is unchanged by this rewrite, so STLplus version 2 files can be read by version 3 and vice versa.

### Print and String-Conversion Functions Renamed

STLplus 2 string_utilities also relied on overloading the functions print and to_string to provide printing and formatting functions for whole data structures. However, because of the redesign of the functions discussed above, functions are now passed as parameters to other functions. To avoid ambiguity, all print and string-formatting functions now have unique names - print_type and type_to_string. See the strings library for more information.