Josuttis 2E has arrived!

For C++98, the standard everyday reference work for the C++ standard library was Nicolai M. Josuttis' The C++ Standard Library.  His updated version for C++11 has been eagerly anticipated, and I was pleased to receive my copy yesterday.

I was confident that the new edition would be a worthy successor to its predecessor, but I have this whole Trust-and-Verify mentality, so I forced myself to withhold judgement until I'd had a chance to check the book's content.  I wasn't disappointed.  Based on skipping around and reading here and there (primarily about functionality new to C++11, including emplacement functions, forward_list, random numbers, tuples, async, and the atomics API, not to mention an overview of new C++11 core language features, e.g., lambda expressions, rvalue references, constexpr, and more), the second edition of The C++ Standard Library looks to be to C++11 what the first edition was to C++98:  the first place to go for a readable and insightful summary of the C++ standard library.  Language lawyers will still turn to the C++ Standard itself, of course, and Josuttis' new book doesn't cover every nuance of library interfaces any more than the first edition did, but note my use of the word readable in my description of his presentation.  The Standard is definitive, but it's not readable.  Josuttis' book is readable, and, for most people most of the time, as good as definitive. I make my living studying the arcania of C++, but when I'm coding, I turn to Josuttis when I can and the Standard only when I must.

Interestingly, the physical size of the new book is no larger than the original edition, even though the standard library has become a lot bigger.  The new book has 300 more pages, however.  (Exactly 300.  The final page number in the first edition is 799, and the final page number in the new version is 1099.  How he managed that, I don't know, but it's a neat trick.)

[The following information about electronic editions has been revised since my original post.]
In terms of electronic editions, the book is available in PDF and ePub, plus there is an edition for Kindle. This information is courtesy of comments readers left on this blog entry, and I am grateful to them for it.

I encourage you to consider buying your own copy of the new edition of The C++ Standard Library.  Having it close at hand was indispensable for C++98 programming, and I think that having it close at hand for C++11 programming will be just as important.

Scott