Chapter 10. The Standard Template Library

At its name implies, the Standard Template Library (STL) is a library of standard class and function templates. You can use these templates to create a wide range of powerful general-purpose classes for organizing your data as well as functions for processing that data in various ways. The STL is defined by the standard for native C++ and is therefore always available with a conforming compiler. Because of its broad applicability, the STL can greatly simplify programming in many of your C++ applications.

Of course, the STL for native C++ does not work with C++/CLI class types but in Visual C++ 2008 you have an additional version of the STL available that contains templates and generic functions that you can instantiate with C++/CLI class types.