In this chapter, we have introduced the container types from STL. We have seen that the way we structure data has a big impact on how efficiently we can perform certain operations on a collection of objects. The asymptotic complexity specifications of STL containers are key factors to consider when choosing among the different data structures.
In addition, we have seen how the cache hierarchy in modern processors impacts the way we need to organize data for efficient access to memory. The importance of utilizing the cache levels efficiently cannot be stressed enough. This is one of the reasons why the containers that keep their elements contiguously in memory have become the most used containers, such as std::vector and std::string.
