Boost C++ Libraries

Boost C++ Libraries

File:Boost.png Boost logo
Stable release	1.41.0 / November 18, 2009
Type	Libraries
License	Boost Software License
Website	http://www.boost.org/

The Boost C++ Libraries are a collection of peer-reviewed, open source libraries that extend the functionality of C++.

Overview

Most of the Boost libraries are licensed under the Boost Software License, designed to allow Boost to be used with both free and proprietary software projects. Many of Boost's founders are on the C++ standard committee and several Boost libraries have been accepted for incorporation into both the Technical Report 1 and C++0x.

The libraries are aimed at a wide range of C++ users and application domains. They range from general-purpose libraries like the smart_ptr library, to operating system abstractions like Boost FileSystem, to libraries primarily aimed at other library developers and advanced C++ users, like the metaprogramming template (MPL) and DSL creation (Proto).

In order to ensure efficiency and flexibility, Boost makes extensive use of templates. Boost has been a source of extensive work and research into generic programming and metaprogramming in C++.

The current Boost release contains over 80 individual libraries, including libraries for linear algebra, pseudorandom number generation, multithreading, image processing, regular expressions, unit testing, and many others. The majority of Boost libraries are header based, consisting of inline functions and templates, and as such do not need to be built in advance of their usage.

Associated people

Original founders of Boost still active in the community include Beman Dawes and David Abrahams. Author of several books on C++, Nicolai Josuttis contributed the Boost array library in 2001. Around 3,000 people are subscribed to Boost mail-list and dozens of them are very active (as of 2007).

List of Libraries in Boost

String and text processing

• conversion/lexical_cast - lexical_cast class template, from Kevlin Henney.
• format - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp.
• iostreams - Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
• regex - Regular expression library, from John Maddock.
• spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as Extended Backus Naur Form (EBNF) grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser, Dan Nuffer and team.
• string_algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba.
• tokenizer - Break of a string or other character sequence into a series of tokens, from John Bandela.
• wave - Standards conformant implementation of the mandated C99/C++ preprocessor functionality packed behind an easy to use iterator interface, from Hartmut Kaiser.
• xpressive - Regular expressions that can be written as strings or as expression templates, and that can refer to each other and themselves recursively with the power of context-free grammars, from Eric Niebler.

Containers

• array - STL compliant container wrapper for arrays of constant size, from Nicolai Josuttis.
• bimap - Bidirectional maps, from Matias Capeletto.
• circular_buffer - STL compliant container also known as ring or cyclic buffer, from Jan Gaspar.
• dynamic_bitset - A runtime sized version of std::bitset from Jeremy Siek and Chuck Allison.
• gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
• graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
• intrusive - Intrusive containers and algorithms, from Ion Gaztañaga.
• multi_array - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia.
• multi_index - Containers with multiple STL-compatible access interfaces, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
• pointer container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
• property map - Concepts defining interfaces which map key objects to value objects, from Jeremy Siek.
• unordered - unordered associative containers, from Daniel James.
• variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman.

Iterators

• gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
• graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
• iterators - Iterator construction framework, adaptors, concepts, and more, from Dave Abrahams, Jeremy Siek, and Thomas Witt.
• operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
• tokenizer - Break of a string or other character sequence into a series of tokens, from John Bandela.

Algorithms

• foreach - BOOST_FOREACH macro for easily iterating over the elements of a sequence, from Eric Niebler.
• gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
• graph - Generic graph components and algorithms, from Jeremy Siek and a University of Notre Dame team.
• minmax - standard library extensions for simultaneous min/max and min/max element computations, from Hervé Brönnimann.
• range - A new infrastructure for generic algorithms that builds on top of the new iterator concepts, from Thorsten Ottosen.
• string_algo - String algorithms library, from Pavol Droba.
• utility - Class next(), prior() function templates, from Dave Abrahams and others.

Function objects and higher-order programming

• bind and mem_fn - Generalized binders for function/object/pointers and member functions, from Peter Dimov.
• function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor.
• functional - Enhanced function object adaptors, from Mark Rodgers.
• functional/hash - A TR1 hash function object that can be extended to hash user defined types, from Daniel James.
• lambda - Define small unnamed function objects at the actual call site, and more, from Jaakko Järvi and Gary Powell.
• ref - A utility library for passing references to generic functions, from Jaako Järvi, Peter Dimov, Doug Gregor, and Dave Abrahams.
• signals - managed signals & slots callback implementation, from Doug Gregor.
• signals2 - managed signals & slots callback implementation (thread-safe version 2), from Frank Mori Hess.
• result_of - determines the type of a function call expression.

Generic Programming

• call_traits - Defines types for passing parameters, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
• concept check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek.
• enable_if - Selective inclusion of function template overloads, from Jaakko Järvi, Jeremiah Willcock, and Andrew Lumsdaine.
• function_types - Type traits for callable, built-in types, from Tobias Schwinger.
• gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.
• in_place_factory, typed_in_place_factory- Generic in-place construction of contained objects with a variadic argument-list, from Fernando Cacciola.
• operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
• property map - Concepts defining interfaces which map key objects to value objects, from Jeremy Siek.
• static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
• type_traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al.

Template Metaprogramming

• function_types - Type traits for callable, built-in types, from Tobias Schwinger.
• fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman, Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
• mpl - Template metaprogramming framework of compile-time algorithms, sequences and metafunction classes, from Aleksey Gurtovoy.
• proto - Expression template library and compiler construction toolkit for domain-specific embedded languages, from Eric Niebler.
• static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
• type_traits - Templates for fundamental properties of types, from John Maddock, Steve Cleary, et al.

Preprocessor Metaprogramming

• preprocessor - Preprocessor metaprogramming tools including repetition and recursion, from Vesa Karvonen and Paul Mensonides.

Concurrent Programming

• asio - Portable networking and other low-level I/O, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution, socket iostreams, serial ports, file descriptors and Windows HANDLEs, from Chris Kohlhoff.
• interprocess - Shared memory, memory mapped files, process-shared mutexes, condition variables, containers and allocators, from Ion Gaztañaga.
• MPI - Message Passing Interface library, for use in distributed-memory parallel application programming, from Douglas Gregor and Matthias Troyer.
• thread - Portable C++ multi-threading, from William Kempf.

Math and numerics

• accumulators - Framework for incremental calculation, and collection of statistical accumulators, from Eric Niebler.
• integer - Headers to ease dealing with integral types.
• interval - Extends the usual arithmetic functions to mathematical intervals, from Guillaume Melquiond, Hervé Brönnimann and Sylvain Pion.
• math - Several contributions in the domain of mathematics, from various authors.
• math/complex number algorithms - These complex number algorithms are the inverses of trigonometric functions currently present in the C++ standard, from John Maddock.
• math/common_factor - Greatest common divisor and least common multiple, from Daryle Walker.
• math/octonion - Octonions, from Hubert Holin.
• math/quaternion - Quaternions, from Hubert Holin.
• math/special_functions - A wide selection of mathematical special functions from John Maddock, Paul Bristow, Hubert Holin and Xiaogang Zhang.
• math/statistical distributions - A wide selection of univariate statistical distributions and functions that operate on them from John Maddock and Paul Bristow.
• multi_array - Multidimensional containers and adaptors for arrays of contiguous data, from Ron Garcia.
• numeric/conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando.
• operators - Templates ease arithmetic classes and iterators, from Dave Abrahams and Jeremy Siek.
• random - A complete system for random number generation, from Jens Maurer.
• rational - A rational number class, from Paul Moore.
• uBLAS - Basic linear algebra for dense, packed and sparse matrices, from Joerg Walter and Mathias Koch.

Correctness and testing

• concept check - Tools for generic programming, from Jeremy Siek.
• static_assert - Static assertions (compile time assertions), from John Maddock.
• test - Support for simple program testing, full unit testing, and for program execution monitoring, from Gennadiy Rozental.

Data structures

• any - Safe, generic container for single values of different value types, from Kevlin Henney.
• bimap - Bidirectional maps, from Matias Capeletto.
• compressed_pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
• fusion - Library for working with tuples, including various containers, algorithms, etc. From Joel de Guzman and Dan Marsden and Tobias Schwinger.
• multi_index - Containers with multiple STL-compatible access interfaces, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
• pointer container - Containers for storing heap-allocated polymorphic objects to ease OO-programming, from Thorsten Ottosen.
• property tree - A tree data structure especially suited to storing configuration data, from Marcin Kalicinski and Sebastian Redl.
• tuple - Ease definition of functions returning multiple values, and more, from Jaakko Järvi.
• variant - Safe, generic, stack-based discriminated union container, from Eric Friedman and Itay Maman.

Image processing

• gil - Generic Image Library, from Lubomir Bourdev and Hailin Jin.

Input/Output

• asio - Portable networking and other low-level I/O, including sockets, timers, hostname resolution, socket iostreams, serial ports, file descriptors and Windows HANDLEs, from Chris Kohlhoff.
• assign - Filling containers with constant or generated data has never been easier, from Thorsten Ottosen.
• format - Type-safe 'printf-like' format operations, from Samuel Krempp.
• io state savers - Save I/O state to prevent jumbled data, from Daryle Walker.
• iostreams - Framework for defining streams, stream buffers and i/o filters, from Jonathan Turkanis.
• program_options - Access to configuration data given on command line, in config files and other sources, from Vladimir Prus.
• serialization - Serialization of arbitrary data for persistence and marshalling, from Robert Ramey

Inter-language support

• python - Reflects C++ classes and functions into Python, from Dave Abrahams.

Memory

• pool - Memory pool management, from Steve Cleary.
• smart_ptr - Five smart pointer class templates, from Greg Colvin, Beman Dawes, Peter Dimov, and Darin Adler.
• utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others.

Parsing

• spirit - LL parser framework represents parsers directly as EBNF grammars in inlined C++, from Joel de Guzman, Hartmut Kaiser, Dan Nuffer and team.

Programming Interfaces

• function - Function object wrappers for deferred calls or callbacks, from Doug Gregor.
• parameter - Write functions that accept arguments by name, by David Abrahams and Daniel Wallin.

Miscellaneous

• base-from-member - Idiom to initialize a base class with a member, from Daryle Walker.
• compressed_pair - Empty member optimization, from John Maddock, Howard Hinnant, et al.
• conversion - Polymorphic and lexical casts, from Dave Abrahams and Kevlin Henney.
• crc - Cyclic Redundancy Code, from Daryle Walker.
• date_time - Date-Time library from Jeff Garland.
• exception - A library for transporting of arbitrary data in exception objects, and transporting of exceptions between threads (N2179), from Emil Dotchevski.
• filesystem - Portable paths, iteration over directories, and other useful filesystem operations, from Beman Dawes.
• flyweight - Design pattern to manage large quantities of highly redundant objects, from Joaquín M López Muñoz.
• numeric/conversion - Optimized Policy-based Numeric Conversions, from Fernando Cacciola.
• optional - Discriminated-union wrapper for optional values, from Fernando Cacciola.
• program_options - Access to configuration data given on command line, in config files and other sources, from Vladimir Prus.
• scope_exit - Execute arbitrary code at scope exit, from Alexander Nasonov.
• statechart - Arbitrarily complex finite state machines can be implemented in easily readable and maintainable C++ code, from Andreas Huber.
• swap - Enhanced generic swap function, from Joseph Gauterin.
• system - Operating system support, including the diagnostics support that will be part of the C++0x standard library, from Beman Dawes.
• timer - Event timer, progress timer, and progress display classes, from Beman Dawes.
• TR1 - An implementation of the Technical Report on C++ Library Extensions, using other Boost libraries as a basis, from John Maddock.
• tribool - 3-state boolean type library, from Doug Gregor.
• typeof - Typeof operator emulation, from Arkadiy Vertleyb and Peder Holt.
• units - Zero-overhead dimensional analysis and unit/quantity manipulation and conversion, from Matthias Schabel and Steven Watanabe.
• utility - Class noncopyable plus checked_delete(), checked_array_delete(), next(), prior() function templates, plus base-from-member idiom, from Dave Abrahams and others.
• value_initialized - Wrapper for uniform-syntax value initialization, from Fernando Cacciola, based on the original idea of David Abrahams.

See also

• Jam — Boost includes a package called Boost.Build, which uses a special version of Perforce Jam called Boost.Jam
• POCO C++ Libraries — alternative design to Boost, that uses class library design more analogous to C# and Java
• Dlib C++ Library — another comprehensive class library
• Standard Template Library

External links

• Boost Homepage
• Boost Windows Binaries
• Smart Pointers to boost your code
• Building Boost libraries