Yet another of these pocket size books from O'Reilly. The subtitle is 'Containers, Iterators, and Algorithms' . There is no doubt in my mind that the STL is a suitable topic for one of these books. Few programmers are fluent enough to remember all the parameters of the algorithms in the correct sequence. And then there is the matter of which containers have some algorithms provided as member functions.

In general this little reference book does a good job though I find it a little quirky in places. For example it completely ignores the 'evil' vectorbool. I think that even a small reference such as this one should not be ignoring specialisations that are so far removed from the template they specialise.

On the other hand the book finishes with miniscule (about six pages) coverage of the Boost libraries. That is pushing in the right direction but I would have hoped for a good deal more. I hope O'Reilly will consider a second edition with more comprehensive cover of 'C++ Containers, Iterators, and Algorithms' or perhaps a book with exactly that as its title.

If you are not fluent with using the STL and need easy access to a memory jogger this book will fit the bill.