Agreed that C++11 is better than C++Original. But no. It's still 19 non-blank lines, all of which you have to think about and maintain. Compare this to an idiom

Agreed that C++11 is better than C++Original. But no. It's still 19 non-blank lines, all of which you have to think about and maintain. Compare this to an idiomatic version written in a "real" scripting language like Python. import fileinput, sys for line in sorted(fileinput.input()): sys.stdout.write(line) Advantages over C++: * Fewer import/using lines (5 lines in the C++ version). * No variable declarations (4 lines in the C++ version). * Automatic iteration over file or file-like objects is very nice. No need to build a list via getline() and the terribly-named "push_back()" function. * No "data.begin(), data.end()" parameters to the sort function -- sane defaults, people. * "for line in file" is so much easier to read than "for(const auto &i : data)". * Return 0 is implicit. Explicit is better than implicit, I know, but this is a very sane default. If there's an exception, Python won't return 0. * Better automatic error handling. What does the C++ version print if a file doesn't exist or if there's a read error? * Thanks to Python's standard library (fileinput module), it automatically handles stdin, multiple input files, etc.