Question

Why does the STL not contain an unbounded integer data type?

I feel like it’s a data type whose purpose is similar to that of a string.
Programmers would not have to worry about overflowing values and could work with much larger numbers.

So I’m curious if there is a specific reason for it’s absence.

This isn’t an issue on how to implement or use one from a 3rd party library,
but just a question as to why the language doesn’t already come with one.
Any links on the matter are appreciated.

Answer 1

You probably mean arbitrary precision arithmetic or big numbers.

Perhaps it is not in C++ because it is not relevant to a wide audience. Very probably, almost any non-trivial C++ code would use some part of the STL (std::ostream or collections like std::vector or types like std::string).

But a lot of code don’t need big numbers.

Likewise, graphical interfaces (like Qt) are not a part of STL, for the same reasons. A lot of people don’t care about these issues (e.g. in server code, or numerical applications).

And defining a standard library is a big effort. In my opinion, C++ STL is perhaps too big already; no need to add a lot more inside.

You might want to use GMP if you need it.