Re: Searching for stack based containers

From:

"Victor Bazarov" <v.Abazarov@comAcast.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Thu, 3 May 2007 09:39:03 -0400

Message-ID:

<f1colr$931$1@news.datemas.de>

jimxoch wrote:

Most STL containers are storing their data on the heap. (although some
std::string implementations are notable exceptions) Of course, using
the heap as storage increases flexibility and allows the handling of
much bigger amounts of data. However, there are cases where this turns
out to be inefficient for at least two reasons: A) Allocations and
deallocations on heap are much slower. B) Memory access on stack is
more cache friendly.

The above facts make me want to try using STL like containers which
are able to store their data on stack. Is anybody familiar with such
container implementations? Any opinions about them?

Plenty of fixed-size vectors (like for K-dimensional geometry) must
use inline arrays for their storage. I have no real opinion about
those, and I can't think of any other containers that would actually
have their storage "stack based".

If you would like to experiment, I'd speculate that any container
with your custom allocator that preallocates a certain amount of
room "on stack" and then lets you reuse that memory should be a good
enough model.

V
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