Let me quote the standard then: [intro.structure] Clause 5 through Clause 15 describe the C++ programming language. That description includes deta

Let me quote the standard then: [intro.structure] Clause 5 through Clause 15 describe the C++ programming language. That description includes detailed syntactic specifications in a form described in 4.3. For convenience, Annex A repeats all such syntactic specifications. Clause 17 through Clause 32 and Annex D (the library clauses) describe the C++ standard library. That description includes detailed descriptions of the entities and macros that constitute the library, in a form described in Clause 16. it's pretty obvious from that than the library is seen as separate from the language - and yes, std:: could be entirely built-ins but as always that'd be under the as-if rule of optimization. Else what would be the meaning of core language defects ? http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_active.html http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_active.html