Container Classes
Introduction
A container class is a class designed to hold and organize multiple instances of another class.
Most well-defined containers will include functions that:
- Create an empty container (via a constructor)
- Insert a new object into the container
- Remove an object from the container
- Report the number of objects currently in the container
- Empty the container of all objects
- Provide access to the stored objects
- Sort the elements (optional)
Two different varieties.
- Value containers are compositions that store copies of the objects that they are holding (and thus are responsible for creating and destroying those copies).
- Reference containers are aggregations that store pointers or references to other objects (and thus are not responsible for creation or destruction of those objects).