Re: default size of STL vector question

From:
 James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sun, 14 Oct 2007 14:41:47 -0700
Message-ID:
<1192398107.947816.104980@t8g2000prg.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 14, 6:00 pm, "Andrew Koenig" <a...@acm.org> wrote:

"zl2k" <kdsfin...@gmail.com> wrote in message

news:1192332345.402818.81120@z24g2000prh.googlegroups.com...

What is the default size of a stl vector?


Zero.

Suppose I have integers
needs to store in a vector and I know the max number of integer is,
say, 1000. Will it be more efficient that I first allocate size of
1000 and then use {vector[counter] = aNumber; counter++} to populate
the vector than by push_back(aNumber)?


Your best bet is probably to reserve enough space (that is, call reserve
rather than resize) and then call push_back repeatedly.

Example:

    vector<int> v;
    v.reserve(n);
    for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i)
        v.push_back(i);

That way, you avoid having to reallocate vector elements, and
you also avoid having to construct elements that you overwrite
later.


That was more or less what I'd assumed until I actually measured
it. For an std::vector<int>, at least for the implementation I
measured (g++ on Sun Sparc, IIRC), doing the initializations was
slightly faster than the push_back's.

This obviously depends on the type--if default construction
followed by assignment is significantly slower than for int, for
example---and the implementation, and as a general rule, I'd
still go with reserve() plus the push_back(), since it will
always be almost as fast, and protects against the case where
construction plus assignment is expensive. But if performance
matters, you have to profile.

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