Tools.h++ Manual

104011 Tandem Computers Incorporated 12-1
Introduction to Collection Classes 12
The Tools.h++ class library includes three different types of collection classes:
• A set of template-based collection classes;
• A set of "generic" collection classes, modeled after Stroustrup (1986),
Chapter 7.3.5;
• A set of Smalltalk-like collection classes.
Despite their very different implementations, their functionality, as well as
their user-interfaces (member function names, etc.), is very similar.
The objective of this chapter is to discuss a few basic concepts about objects
and collection classes in general and to expose some of the jargon that you're
likely to encounter both here and in the literature.
12.1 Concepts
The general objective of collection classes is to store and retrieve objects. What
makes them different from one another is how they store the object and how
they do a lookup.