[kamprath]

This may be obvious, but are there any advantages at all of using Apple's Core Foundation libraries like CFArray and CFDictionary over the STL templates lime map<> and vector<> (if you are programming in C++ that is)? I've used STL so much, and I see the Core Foundation container libraries are STL -like, but is there any real advantage (like extra-efficient use of kernel?)?

Michael Kamprath

[Cobra Commander]

Originally posted by kamprath:
<STRONG>This may be obvious, but are there any advantages at all of using Apple's Core Foundation libraries like CFArray and CFDictionary over the STL templates lime map&lt;&gt; and vector&lt;&gt; (if you are programming in C++ that is)? I've used STL so much, and I see the Core Foundation container libraries are STL -like, but is there any real advantage (like extra-efficient use of kernel?)?

Michael Kamprath</STRONG>

If you want portable code, shouldn't you stick with STL?

[Wixar]

One advantage of CoreFoundation over the STL is that CoreFoundation has a built in memory management paradigm: the retain/release reference counting. As far as I know, the STL has none.

Another advantage is that there's a lot more to CoreFoundation than there is to the STL. For example, CF has objects for sockets, preferences, run loops, and a lot more that's not part of STL. Those objects require and return CF collections and CF strings rather than the STL equivalents, so if you're planning on using those CF objects as well as the STL, you'll be converting between collections quite a bit.

-Peter

[aleph_null]

I'm not in the know, having not looked at it all first-hand, but MacApp supposedly has some utility classes which wrap CF containers with C++ interfaces. Might be worth looking into. They also said (at the last WWDC) that they were moving towards a more STL-like paradigm across the board for their containers and such.

This was all before Apple announced they would stop updating MacApp, of course.