STL VS C++ Format

Compare STL vs C++ Format and see what are their differences.

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STL C++ Format
154 161
9,732 19,307
1.6% 1.6%
9.7 9.8
about 6 hours ago 6 days ago
C++ C++
GNU General Public License v3.0 or later GNU General Public License v3.0 or later
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.

STL

Posts with mentions or reviews of STL. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-04-03.
  • Show HN: Logfmtxx – Header only C++23 structured logging library using logfmt
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Apr 2024
    Again, they are barely functional.

    MSVC chokes on many standard-defined constructs: https://github.com/microsoft/STL/issues/1694

    clang does not claim to be "mostly usable" at all - most papers are not implemented: https://clang.llvm.org/cxx_status.html#cxx20

    And gcc will only start ot be usable with CMake when version 14 is released - that has not happened yet.

    And, as I mentioned before, IDE support is either buggy (Visual Studio) or non-existing (any other IDE/OS). So you're off to writing in a text editor and hoping your compiler works to a somewhat usable degree. Yes, at some point people should start using modules, I agree, but to advise library maintainers to ship modularized code... the tooling just isn't there yet.

    I mean, the GitHub issue is Microsoft trying to ship their standard library modularized, they employ some of the most capable folks on the planet and pay them big money to get that done, while metaphorically sitting next to the Microsoft compiler devs, and they barely, barely get it done (with bugs, as they themselves mention). This is too much for most other library maintainers.

  • Cpp2 and cppfront – An experimental 'C++ syntax 2' and its first compiler
    7 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 31 Mar 2024
    Notice that there are in practice three distinct implementations of the C++ standard library. They're all awful to read though, here's Microsoft's std::vector https://github.com/microsoft/STL/blob/main/stl/inc/vector

    However you're being slightly unfair because Rust's Vec is just defined (opaquely) as a RawVec plus a length value, so let's link RawVec, https://doc.rust-lang.org/src/alloc/raw_vec.rs.html -- RawVec is the part responsible for the messy problem of how to actually implement the growable array type.

    Still, the existence of three C++ libraries with slightly different (or sometimes hugely different) quality of implementation means good C++ code can't depend on much beyond what the ISO document promises, and yet it must guard against the nonsense inflicted by all three and by lacks of the larger language. In particular everything must use the reserved prefix so that it's not smashed inadvertently by a macro, and lots of weird C++ idioms that preserve performance by sacrificing clarity of implementation are needed, even where you'd ordinarily sacrifice to get the development throughput win of everybody know what's going on. For example you'll see a lot of "pair" types bought into existence which are there to squirrel away a ZST that in C++ can't exist, using the Empty Base Optimisation. In Rust the language has ZSTs so they can just write what they meant.

  • C++ Specification vs Implementation
    3 projects | /r/cpp_questions | 19 Nov 2023
  • C++23: Removing garbage collection support
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 1 Nov 2023
    Here is Microsoft's implementation of map in the standard library. I think of myself as a competent programmer / computer scientist. I couldn't write this: https://github.com/microsoft/STL/blob/f392449fb72d1a387ac502...
  • std::condition_variable wait for (very) long time
    1 project | /r/cpp | 4 Jul 2023
    Be careful on Windows, the MSVC STL implementation uses the system time, so it can be badly impacted by clock adjustments: https://github.com/microsoft/STL/issues/718
  • Compiler explorer: can you use C++23 std lib modules with MSVC already?
    1 project | /r/cpp | 1 Jul 2023
    Can you provide a link? If it affects import std;, I'd like to add it to my tracking issue.
  • Learn to write production quality STL like classes
    4 projects | /r/cpp_questions | 28 Jun 2023
  • MSVC C++23 Update
    3 projects | /r/cpp | 3 Jun 2023
    Do you have a list of the bugs you've filed and their current status, like the one I have for the STL? I saw you mentioned 3 bugs 7 months ago, 2 of which were fixed in 17.6 and the third of which was a duplicate of an active bug ("deducing this" is known to not yet work with modules, which is why we don't define the feature-test macro to claim full support).
  • C++/CLI wrap of a C++ class that includes <future> in public header
    1 project | /r/dotnet | 3 May 2023
  • Has Boost lost its charm?
    3 projects | /r/cpp | 27 Apr 2023
    Yep. And look at our implementation's name: https://github.com/microsoft/STL

C++ Format

Posts with mentions or reviews of C++ Format. We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-03-13.
  • C++ left arrow operator (2016)
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 24 Mar 2024
    Continuation passing monads form the basis of a perfectly valid and usable software architecture and programming pattern.

    In the case of ostream and operator<<, this pattern reduces the number of intermediate objects that would otherwise be constructed.

    If you object to iostream on religious or stylistic grounds, there's always fmt which is more like Go or Python string interpolation.[0]

    0. https://fmt.dev

  • C++ Game Utility Libraries: for Game Dev Rustaceans
    9 projects | dev.to | 13 Mar 2024
    GitHub repo: fmtlib/fmt
  • Creating k-NN with C++ (from Scratch)
    6 projects | dev.to | 11 Jan 2024
    cmake_minimum_required(VERSION 3.5) project(knn_cpp CXX) # Set up C++ version and properties include(CheckIncludeFileCXX) check_include_file_cxx(any HAS_ANY) check_include_file_cxx(string_view HAS_STRING_VIEW) check_include_file_cxx(coroutine HAS_COROUTINE) set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD 20) set(CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE Debug) set(CMAKE_CXX_STANDARD_REQUIRED ON) set(CMAKE_CXX_EXTENSIONS OFF) # Copy data file to build directory file(COPY ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/iris.data DESTINATION ${CMAKE_CURRENT_BINARY_DIR}) # Download library usinng FetchContent include(FetchContent) FetchContent_Declare(matplotplusplus GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/alandefreitas/matplotplusplus GIT_TAG origin/master) FetchContent_GetProperties(matplotplusplus) if(NOT matplotplusplus_POPULATED) FetchContent_Populate(matplotplusplus) add_subdirectory(${matplotplusplus_SOURCE_DIR} ${matplotplusplus_BINARY_DIR} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL) endif() FetchContent_Declare( fmt GIT_REPOSITORY https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt.git GIT_TAG 7.1.3 # Adjust the version as needed ) FetchContent_MakeAvailable(fmt) # Add executable and link project libraries and folders add_executable(${PROJECT_NAME} main.cc) target_link_libraries(${PROJECT_NAME} PUBLIC matplot fmt::fmt) aux_source_directory(lib LIB_SRC) target_include_directories(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}) target_sources(${PROJECT_NAME} PRIVATE ${LIB_SRC}) add_subdirectory(tests)
  • Optimizing the unoptimizable: a journey to faster C++ compile times
    1 project | news.ycombinator.com | 7 Jan 2024
    Good catch, thanks! Fixed now. This explains why the difference was kinda low compared to another benchmark: https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt?tab=readme-ov-file#compile-tim....
  • Learn Modern C++
    6 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 26 Dec 2023
    > This is from C++23, right?

    std::println is, yes.

    > I wonder how available this is within compilers

    https://en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/compiler_support says clang, gcc, and msvc all support it, though I don't know how recent those versions are off the top of my head.

    In my understanding, with this specific feature, if you want a polyfill for older compilers, or to use some more cutting-edge features that haven't been standardized yet, https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt is available to you.

  • The C++20 Naughty and Nice List for Game Devs
    3 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 25 Dec 2023
  • For processing strings, streams in C++ can be slow
    8 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 6 Dec 2023
    {fmt} has internal buffering but it's not yet exposed to users. There is a feature request for it: https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt/issues/2354. FILE buffering is not too bad but it can be easily optimized: https://www.zverovich.net/2020/08/04/optimal-file-buffer-siz....
  • adoption of fmt based logging
    1 project | /r/cpp | 6 Dec 2023
    Automatic use of operator<< when that exists was present in fmt until version 9.0.0. In version 9 you could use FMT_DEPRECATED_OSTREAM to opt in the old behaviour, but this too was removed in version 10.0.0. Now there is no way to automatically use operator<<.
  • What's your favorite c++20 feature that should've been there 10 years ago?
    1 project | /r/cpp | 5 Dec 2023
    You can install it https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt
  • Codebases to read
    5 projects | /r/cpp | 5 Dec 2023
    Additionally, if you like low level stuff, check out libfmt (https://github.com/fmtlib/fmt) - not a big project, not difficult to understand. Or something like simdjson (https://github.com/simdjson/simdjson).

What are some alternatives?

When comparing STL and C++ Format you can also consider the following projects:

EA Standard Template Library - EASTL stands for Electronic Arts Standard Template Library. It is an extensive and robust implementation that has an emphasis on high performance.

spdlog - Fast C++ logging library.

asio - Boost.org asio module

Better Enums - C++ compile-time enum to string, iteration, in a single header file

robin-hood-hashing - Fast & memory efficient hashtable based on robin hood hashing for C++11/14/17/20

ZXing - ZXing ("Zebra Crossing") barcode scanning library for Java, Android

tracy - Frame profiler

FastFormat - The fastest, most robust C++ formatting library

gcc

ZBar - Clone of the mercurial repository http://zbar.hg.sourceforge.net:8000/hgroot/zbar/zbar

llvm-project - The LLVM Project is a collection of modular and reusable compiler and toolchain technologies.

Scintilla