Standard C++ Iostreams and Locales: Advanced Programmer's Guide and Reference

When people think of C++ standard libraries, they think of the STL. There are dozens of books on the STL, and everyone is taking advantages of its features to get good algorithms that don't reinvent the wheel.As this book points out, IOStreams is perhaps the most-overlooked part of standard C++. It has just as many features as the STL, and can help you write less, better code if you take advantage of it. If you have ever spent a few days writing a buffer class, you didn't have to; The IOStreams streambuf is comletely extensible and customizable.Even better, IOStreams is a complex, high-performance library written by a C++ expert from Bell Labs. Most of us C++ programmers don't think about how IOStreams works, other than to write 'The book is even endorsed by Jerry Schwarz, the man who invented IOStreams, and has a forward written by him. If you own two STL books, but not this book, I think you've made a mistake. This should be the third C++ book you buy, after a language reference and STL reference. It is that useful and interesting.

The reason why I bought this book was the wish to learn more about the C++ Standard. When I held the book in my hand the first time I was not shure if it would be worth the time reading it. It seemed only be useful for a DOS - like software, not for my GUI problems. So I was very surprised in a good sense to read about ideas how to use IOStreams for GUI - internationalization (I18N), described on pages 175 and 225. The IOStreams library, as it is described by the authors, is a better answer to my I18N - problems than all other three GUI - libraries I know. It offers more flexibility. An other treasure was the techniqe of two-phase polymorphic dispatch described in this excellent book. This technique allows me a much more flexible design than in the past. If the customer asked for new features I often had to change my class hierarchy (and all classes in it) by adding new virtual functions. It is cumbersome if it is code of a library. The two-phase polymorphic dispatch shows an alternative. The third (but not the last) treasure are the appendices. They are a good reference for C++ refinements.The thought I perhaps would not have read this book worries me, I had missed a chance.Many thanks to the authors writing such an excellent book.

As the authors point out, the STL comprises about a third of the standard library, and the streams and locales portion another third, yet whereas there are dozens of books available describing STL, this is the only up-to-date treatment of streams and locales that I have come across.Fortunately, it's very well-written, by knowledgeable authors. The text is fairly dense reading, but it flows logically, and the information has not been put together this well anywhere else that I have seen.Chances are, if you are a C++ programmer, you use the streams library fairly regularly. You may not, however, be familiar with the details of the streams design. Similarly, my experience has been that I may have touched upon locales occasionally, but did not have a detailed grasp of the breadth of the design.Because of this, and because these may not be everyday issues, it is very valuable to have a detailed reference book to refer to when you need it. This book fits the bill very nicely.

This book is it. There is no other text which covers the full I/O Streams library as of the ISO C++99 standard. B. Stroustrup's book "The C++ Programming language" has one chapter of 50+ pages on streams. Its enough to get you started, but not enough if you want to make roll your own. Your other choice is to comb back issues of C++ Report and C/C++ User's Journal for the relevent information. (And know enough to ignore the articles that do it wrong. Ok maybe wrong is too strong a word, but now that you have the option to understand how the streams library is built you can use it the way it was intended.)There is now no reason ANY programmer should create a new ostream class by inheriting from basic_ostream. The I/O streams library was designed to be extended by programmers. Read this book and learn how to do it so that you don't have to re-write every sub member as a forward to the actual class.As for Locales, there is a chapter in the latest version of B.S's book as an Appendix. Or about 1/4th of this book is devoted to how that mechanism works.Buy it. You need it. Without it you are programming by guess and by golly.

Calling this book "good" is an under statement. There is simply no other book that covers the iostream library to the level of detail found here. This is just an awesome book. The text has been a joy to read. Not exactly light reading but worth it. This book serves well as a tutorial and reference guide to the iostream. I haven't yet read the section on Locales but expect it to be of the same caliber.The last time a C++ book had such an impression was "The Annotated C++ Reference Manual" of many years ago. This book ranks right up there.Clearly, serious C++ developers will want to have this book in their C++ reference collection.