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Possible Duplicate:
What are the advantages of using the C++ Boost libraries?

Hi,

i am very new to this Boost, i had herd of this but now i'm willing to dig deeper. can you please help me out from scratch what exactly is boost, where is it used and its advantages other things.

Thanks

Community
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Naruto
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    Most of boost does not require a lib. So it seems rather a redundant question. The bits that do require a lib have their own specific lib (not a generic boost lib). – Martin York Jan 21 '11 at 04:54
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    Duplicate of http://stackoverflow.com/questions/125580/what-are-the-advantages-of-using-the-c-boost-libraries – Tony Delroy Jan 21 '11 at 05:01
  • I've removed the C tag. C++ != C. You can't use Boost in a C program. The question has nothing to do with C. – JeremyP Jan 21 '11 at 08:31

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Boost is a collection of libraries which provide functionality beyond the C++ Standard Library. The advantage of using Boost is that you don't have to recreate existing functionality (always good) and the libraries are created by some of the top minds in the C++ community (i.e., their implementations will most likely be better than something you could put together). Boost libraries have also made their way into the C++ Standard Library (see TR1 and shared_ptr in particular for some well known examples). In addition, Boost works on a variety of platforms and with numerous compilers. Some people don't want to use it because it introduces extra dependencies or because other programmers on their team aren't familiar with it, among other reasons, but most of the libraries are header-only and are fairly easy to use.

Gemini14
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Boost is a large collection of useful C++ add-ons. Its size and scope are large enough to prevent a concise description.

Many members of boost are also active in the C++ standards bodies, so there are some boost classes that are being incorporated into C++0x, for example the smart pointer and hash container classes.

The peer review process appears to enforce high standards in the quality of the libraries.

Mark Ransom
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