Introduction

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## Introduction

#### How to use this document

This documentation contains a large amount of information. Whereas it may be worth reading it all, this documentation is intended for programmers with various motives:

I have to finished this today, I just want a bidirectional map!

  If your boss will kill you if the project is not finished by the end of the day, just read the One-minute tutorial. If you have a background in STL, you can be testing a bimap within ten minutes.

I am a serious programmer and want to learn Boost.Bimap

  Boost.Bimap has a lot to offer if you are prepared to spend some time reading this documentation. You will need to read The tutorial and skim through some of the Examples. The best way to read this documentation is in the order given here. Just click on the arrow at the right bottom corner as you finish each page. You may skip the reference section, and return to it later to look up a function signature or to find a specific metafunction.

I just love C++, I want to see the inner workings of Boost.Bimap.

  If you are a library developer, this documentation is the best place to learn how Boost.Bimap is implemented. It is strongly recommended that you first learn to use the library as if you were the second type of programmer above. This library was developed in the Google SoC 2006, and the mentor and student generated a great deal of documentation in the building process. The rationale section is very large and contains a lot of information. There is a history section for those who might find it useful. Finally, in the reference section, each entity of the library is documented and its source code is presented.

| Note
If anything in the documentation is unclear, please email me at matias {dot} capeletto {at} gmail {dot} com, telling me which of the three types of programmer above you are and which section needs improvement. Please use the following notation for the subject: [boost][bimap] Your problem as this will help me to identify it more easily. If appropriate, I will act on your advice to improve the documentation. Thanks and enjoy!

| Important
If you should find a bug or would like to see an additional feature in the library, please use the standard Boost methods of dealing with this kind of issue rather than emailing me directly. Boost has a very good system to track bugs and features requests, and using it is the best way of dealing with them as soon as possible.

#### Navigation

Used in combination with the configured browser key (usually Alt), the following keys act as handy shortcuts for common navigation tasks.

- General
  - `p` - Previous page
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  - `h` - home
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- Main TOC
  - `i` - Introduction
  - `o` - One minute tutorial
  - `t` - The tutorial
  - `b` - Bimap and Boost
  - `r` - Reference
  - `c` - Compiler specifics
  - `v` - Performance
  - `e` - Examples
  - `s` - Test Suite
  - `f` - Future work
  - `m` - Release notes
  - `w` - Rationale
  - `y` - History
  - `a` - Acknowledgements