What's the difference between “STL” and “C++ Standard Library”?

Question

Someone brought this article to my attention that claims (I\'m paraphrasing) the STL term is misused to refer to the entire C++ Standard Library instead of the part

Answer 1

The term "STL" or "Standard Template Library" does not show up anywhere in the ISO 14882 C++ standard. So referring to the C++ standard library as STL is wrong. The term "C++ Standard Library" or "standard library" is what's officially used by ISO 14882:

ISO 14882 C++ Standard:

17 - Library introduction [lib.library]:

1. This clauses describes the contents of the C++ Standard Library, how a well-formed C++ program makes use of the library, and how a conforming implementation may provide the entities in the library.

...

STL is a library originally designed by Alexander Stepanov, independent of the C++ standard. However, some components of the C++ standard library include STL components like vector, list and algorithms like copy and swap.

But of course the C++ standard includes much more things outside the STL, so the term "C++ standard library" is more correct (and is what's actually used by the standards documents).