04 March 2008

STL-related : rdestl

A while back I blogged about the EASTL - Electronic Arts Standard Template Library.

It is an interesting look at how EA have internally implemented their own STL with their own improvements/changes specific to their problem domain.

Maciej Sinilo has spent some time putting together a small subset of the STL changed for some game development requirements called the RDESTL. The related blog posts can be read here, here and here. It provides some basic containers (vector, etc), a string class, and some additional container types like intrusive containers. It also provides the EASTL outlook on allocators (which I don't agree with but that is another story).

It is definitely interesting to see the code as it is quite readable. I do wonder whether it achieved part of the EASTL goal which was allowing the compiler to optimise more aggressively because the code is simpler with less indirection.

Also, here is a link to someone else who is replacing the STL. Link via the excellent warpedvisions (with an excellent biting comment).