In which scenario do I use a particular STL container?
Question
I've been reading up on STL containers in my book on C++, specifically the section on the STL and its containers. Now I do understand each and every one of them have their own specific properties, and I'm close to memorizing all of them... But what I do not yet grasp is in which scenario each of them is used.
What is the explanation? Example code is much prefered.
Accepted Answer
This cheat sheet provides a pretty good summary of the different containers.
See the flowchart at the bottom as a guide on which to use in different usage scenarios:
Created by David Moore and licensed CC BY-SA 3.0
Popular Answer
Here is a flowchart inspired by David Moore's version (see above) that I created, which is up-to-date (mostly) with the new standard (C++11). This is only my personal take on it, it's not indisputable, but I figured it could be valuable to this discussion:
