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TR1

TR1 is the common shorthand for ISO/IEC TR19768, C++ Library Extensions, which is the first major addition to the Standard C++ library. It is non-normative, which means it need not be provided by a conforming C++ compiler. Nevertheless, the features in TR1 have been widely anticipated in the C++ programming community. You can see the final draft of TR1 at http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1836.pdf.

Even better, get the new book by Pete Becker, "The C++ Standard Library Extensions: A Tutorial and Reference." It's a complete description of TR1, containing hundreds of examples. Pete wrote much of our TR1 code, tests, and documentation, so you can't find a better guide to our TR1 library. The book is available in computer book stores, or from amazon.com:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0321412990/

Broadly speaking, TR1 has three major components:

  1. C++ templates, such as hash tables, template metaprogramming aids, sophisticated random-number generators, and a comprehensive regular-expression parser -- This component is based largely on contributions made to the Boost library over the past several years. They augment the Standard C++ library in important ways, particularly in the rapidly growing area of template metaprogramming.
  2. Special math functions, such as Bessel functions and elliptic integrals -- This component consists of math functions widely used in the scientific community. They comprise the next logical step in sophistication from the functions supplied with C99.
  3. C99 library, including all the numerous functions added to the C Standard with C99, properly blended into the C++ environment -- This component reconciles minor conflicts between the Standard C and Standard C++ libraries to make a coherent and more powerful library. (It is based heavily on the Dinkum Unabridged Library first released in early 2003.)

Note that components 1 and 3 have already been voted into the next version of the C++ Standard (informally called C++0X), so much of TR1 is destined to become a normative requirement for Standard C++ in the coming years.

For specific technical details of what's in TR1, see the on-line reference.

For a comparison of other implementations of TR1, click here.

Note that TR1 often pushes the limits of the latest C++ technology. We work hard to support the older Microsoft compilers, such as VC++ V6, V7, and the numerous embedded variants, but we can't make everything in TR1 work for these compilers. (By contrast, we fully support TR1 for VC++ V7.1 and V8, and GCC V3 and V4.) Here are some constraints, by component:

  1. Most of component 1 is not supported by the older compilers. Template classes array, unordered_map, and unordered_set work, as do regular expressions for char strings only.
  2. All of special math is supported, except for the generic overloading described below.
  3. All of C99 is supported, except the templates needed to reproduce generic overloading of math functions. (For example, pow(3.0L, 2) should call powl(3.0L, 2L) with TR1, but it remains ambiguous with the older compilers.)