standardikirjastoon

Standardikirjastoon is the illative form used in Finnish programming language terminology to refer to the standard library of a language, i.e., the officially provided set of APIs and runtime facilities that accompany a language distribution. The term denotes the collection of commonly used tools that are guaranteed to be available across supported platforms and implementations.

The standard library typically includes basic data types, input/output, file and network access, text processing, date and time handling, collections, error handling, and often facilities for concurrency, serialization, and interoperability with the runtime. It is designed to offer portable, stable, well-documented interfaces that support common programming tasks without requiring third‑party dependencies. Access to these facilities is usually built into the language's syntax or standard import mechanisms, and the library evolves alongside the language through formal versioning and deprecation policies.

In practice, many languages have a well-known standard library that is distinguished from external libraries. Examples include the Python standard library, the Java Standard Edition API, and the C standard library (libc). Some languages also provide optional components or platforms where parts of the standard library differ by target environment (for example, mobile vs. desktop).

Maintenance and governance of the standard library are typically handled by the language's maintainers or a standards body, with emphasis on backward compatibility and security. While the standard library covers a broad set of common needs, developers may still rely on third‑party libraries for specialized functionality, performance optimizations, or platform-specific features beyond the standard suite.