Claw is a C++ Library Absolutely Wonderful. The story of Claw begins when I wanted to group all the small tools I've made along my studies at the university. The library progress from time to time, when I need a new tool.

Claw wants to be standard compliant and as portable as possible. Of course, because I'm currently the only developer, the task is a little bit difficult and you could have some minor problems. If you experience any problem, please let me know.

Claw doesn't have a particular objective but being useful to anyone.

Click here to see the changes with the previous version.

Claw is made of several classes. All of them are documented with Doxygen. Here is a small presentation of these classes.

Data structures

automaton	this class is a basic automaton. The structure allow the automaton to not be determinist.
avl	an AVL (Adelson, Velskij, and Landis; the names of the authors) is a binary search tree with the property that the difference between the depths of the left and right subtrees is, at most, 1.
basic_singleton	the singleton design pattern.
graph	a class implementing a graph structure with adjacent lists implementation.
multi_type_map	a kind of map that can support values of  different types associated with the same key.
ordered_set	an ordered set is a set, but ordered.
tree	a tree of any degree.
trie	a trie is a tree-like structure used to store strings (words) with unique representation of common prefixes in memory.

Mathematicalconcepts

box_2d	a box in a 2D space is represented by the coordinates of two opposite corners.
coordinate_2d	X and Y coordinates.
line_2d	a line in a 2D space.
rectangle	a rectangle in a 2D space. Same as claw::math::box_2d but represented by its coordinates and size.
vector_2d	a vector in a 2D space.

Algorithms

game_state, min_max, alpha_beta	classes to easily implement artificial intelligence to two players board games.
scan_events	interface for all the events happening in thescan of a graph.
breadth_scan	this algorithm does a breadth first scan of a graph.
depth_scan	this algorithm does a depth first scan of a graph.
topological_sort	this algorithm does a topological sort of an oriented and acyclic graph.
kmp	Knuth, Morris and Pratt linear algorithm for pattern finding in strings (not only text).
rle_encoder, rle_decoder	classes to help encoding/decoding RLE streams.
lzw_encoder, lzw_decoder	classes to help encoding/decoding LZW (Lempel, Ziv, Welch) streams.

Graphism

color_palette	a class that manage the color palette in palettized images.
bitmap	a simple class for reading and writing bitmap files (24 bpp only for writing).
image	base class for 32 bpp image manipulation.
jpeg	a class for reading and writing jpeg files. This class uses the jpeglib.
pcx	a simple class for reading and writing pcx files (24 bpp only for writing).
png	a class for reading and writing png files. This class uses libpng.
targa	a class for reading and writing Targa files (32 bpp only for writing).
xbm	a simple class for reading and writing xbm files.

Tools

Iterators

it_index	a class to manage an index (integer) and an iterator easily.
wrapped_iterator	an iterator that applies a function on each pointed element. The function must return a reference on the element. For example, combined with claw::pair_first, it allows to iterate through the keys of a std::map.

Functors

binary_true	a binary functor returning true.
clone	function object that clones a pointer.
delete_function	function object that deletes a pointer.
dereference	function object that dereferences a pointer.
pair_first, pair_second, first, second	these class are functors returning the first (or second) member of a std::pair (useful when you need to get the keys of a std::map).
unary_compose	function object that composes two function objects.
unary_true	a unary functor returning true.

Application

application	this class should help you to define the main class of your application and to deal with command line parameters.
arguments_table	a class to manage the arguments of your program, with automatic management of short/long arguments and help message.
arguments	if you don't want to use the class claw::application, you can always use this one to deal with the arguments passed to your program.
dynamic_library	this class allow to dynamically load a library and to get a function pointer on its symbols.

Meta-programming

if_then_else	conditional type declaration.
same_type	test if two types are the same.
type_list	a list of types.
type_list_find	check if a type is in a given type_list.
type_list_is_a_set	test if a each type in a type_list is present only once.

System

config_file	a class allowing to load informations from a configuration file (like .ini under Windows).
system_info	a class to get informations about the system or the user.

Miscellanious

exception	a standard compliant exception class that allow you to pass a descriptive string at the constructor.
logger	this class can help you to trace your program, with different levels of log.
non_copyable	inherit from this class if you don't want your class to be copyable.
smart_ptr	a smart pointer class, with reference count.

Streams

bit_istream, bit_ostream	two classes to help reading and writing custom bit-length data.
buffered_istream, buffered_ostream	these classes are made to help reading and writing in streams with a buffer.

Network

isocket_stream, osocket_stream, socket_stream	implementation of the Unix sockets, to be used like any stream of the standard C++ library.
socket_server	a class to easily open a socket and create claw::net::socketstreams from incoming connections.

Functions

Strings

trim_left, trim_right, trim	remove spaces (or any set of characters) at the left/right/both sides of a string.
squeeze	group successive identic characters in a string, from a given set of characters.
is_of_type	tell if a string contains data of a given type.

The documentation of the classes is available online.

Select the file(s) matching your distribution and/or operating system.

	source code		runtime libraries Ubuntu Hardy
	development files Ubuntu Hardy		Windows installer Windows XP

Download of older versions is available through sourceforge's website.

Claw is licensed under the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), version 2.1. Among other things, the license allow you a full access to the source code and allow you to use the library even if your program is not free. A copy of the license is included in the package, but you can also access to through this link.

If you have any question, you can send me a mail and I'll try to answer as soon as possible.

If you have any comment, you can also send me a mail.

If you want to help, you can send me a mail explaining how do you think you can help.