Re: What is the output of this program?

From:
"Alf P. Steinbach" <alfps@start.no>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
14 Jul 2006 17:03:08 -0400
Message-ID:
<4hnvdiFhdshU1@individual.net>
* kanze:

Earl Purple wrote:

Alf P. Steinbach wrote:

push_back can be a tad inefficient on strings, because
strings are usually short, and for short sequences the
reallocations, assuming scaling of buffer size, are more
frequent and thus more costly.


I don't think it's the allocations that make push_back
inefficient, (you can do reserve() ahead and std::string will
often allocate enough anyway). What makes it inefficient is
that push_back has to do a bounds-check on every call (how
else will it know whether to reallocate?).

Much more efficient is resize().


I doubt it. I also doubt that either make a significant
difference.


Possibly you're talking about something entirely different than the
following program?

<code>
#include <cstddef> // std::size_t, EXIT_SUCCESS, EXIT_FAILURE
#include <ctime> // std::clock, std::clock_t
#include <iostream> // std::cout, std::cerr
#include <ostream> // operator<<, std::endl
#include <stdexcept> // std::exception
#include <string> // std::string

std::size_t const nIterations = 100000;
std::size_t const nCharsToAdd = 100;

void pushbacking( std::string& s )
{
     for( std::size_t i = 0; i < ::nCharsToAdd; ++i )
     {
         s.push_back( '*' );
     }
}

void indexing( std::string& s )
{
     std::size_t const originalSize = s.size();
     s.resize( originalSize + nCharsToAdd );
     for( std::size_t i = originalSize; i < originalSize +
::nCharsToAdd; ++i )
     {
         s[i] = '*';
     }
}

void test( std::string const& fName, void f( std::string& ) )
{
     std::clock_t const startTime = std::clock();
     for( std::size_t i = 1; i <= ::nIterations; ++i )
     {
         std::string s = "knurre, voff!";
         f( s );
     }
     std::clock_t const endTime = std::clock();
     double const duration =
         double(endTime - startTime)/CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

     std::cout << fName << ": " << duration << " seconds." << std::endl;
}

#define TEST( f ) test( #f, f )

void cppMain()
{
     TEST( pushbacking );
     TEST( indexing );
}

int main()
{
     try
     {
         cppMain();
         return EXIT_SUCCESS;
     }
     catch( std::exception const& x )
     {
         std::cerr << "!" << x.what() << std::endl;
         return EXIT_FAILURE;
     }
}
</code>

With two different compilers on my clunky old home PC:

* MSVC 7.1:
   pushbacking: 1.468 seconds
   indexing: 0.125 seconds.

* g++ 3.4.4:
   pushbacking: 10.344 seconds.
   indexing: 0.313 seconds.

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