mirror of https://github.com/CGAL/cgal
33 lines
1.3 KiB
TeX
33 lines
1.3 KiB
TeX
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\cleardoublepage
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\chapter{Introduction}
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\cgal\ is the {\em Computational Geometry Algorithms Library} that is
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developed by the {\sc Esprit} project \cgal.
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The library is written in \CC\ and makes heavily use of {\em templates},
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which are a means to obtain generic code.
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\stl\ is the Standard Template Library. Its main components are {\em
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containers}, {\em algorithms}, {\em iterators} and {\em function
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objects}. This library is part of the ISO \CC\ standard
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\cite{cgal:ansi-is14882-98}.
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\stl\ is more than a library, it is a framework and a programming paradigm
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which was adopted by the \cgal\ project for its library of geometric
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algorithms.
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This document describes in a simplified way the basic features of \stl.
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After reading this document you should be able to use these features
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which are used throughout the \cgal\ library.
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This document is neither a reference manual nor a tutorial for \stl.
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For the sake of simplicity we sometimes sacrifice exactness.
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If you compare what is written in this document with what is written
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in the reference manual you will see that in reality things are
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slightly more general and hence slightly more complicated.
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If you want to develop your own iterators or containers, this is
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definitely the wrong document for you.
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We recommend to have a look at the header files themselves as the code is
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extremely instructive.
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