NSTL - The Power of the STL for .NET

The NSTL Project

The NSTL project is a port and adaptation of the C++ STL to the .NET world. The main focus is to preserve the concepts and the power of the STL, especially in the area of algorithms and extensibility. It features the complete set of the STL's algorithms, a set of containers that are missing in the System.Collections.Generic namespace and the full range of adapters, binders and functors. It is fully compatible with the .NET collections and concepts.

Further documentation can be found here.

Current Status

The current releaseversion is 2.7, implemented in .NET 2.0. Latest Builds are posted on a regular basis. As they are have undergone a full automated release build, they can be considered as stable as a regular release.


Road map

In the next minor releases some missing algorithms from different STL implementations will be added and overloads will be provided to make the use of adapters for the .NET System.Collections.Generic classes unnecessary.

With LINQ, .NET 3.5 offers a comprehensive and powerfull algorithm and data structure library. The next major release 3.0 will integrate tightly with it. Additional to the full orthogonal decoupled power of the NSTL's algorithms, those that can not be replaced by LINQ standard query operators, will be offered as such query operators. .NETcollections will be enriched with extension methods to let them closely interact with the NSTL's feature, without using the bulky adapters that are necessary right now. The plan is a seamless transition between LINQ and the NSTL in both directions.

A stable pre release can be found in the Latest Builds section.