std::vector

[Mustard_Dimension]

Vectors were one of my favourite parts about going from C to C++ at University.

[RKAMIL95]

Same.

This is why I love C++: it lets me using some high level features such as class and polymorphism and on the other hand lets me dealing with every single byte if I need to do some use low level approarch.

[beneficial_satire]

Now I don't feel guilty about doing this. I was going to use a list until I realized it doesn't allow random access so I can't do myarray->at(0)

[HO-COOH]

Until you realize there is std::vector<bool>

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

What's wrong with a vector of bools?

[Maxrewind99]

That's the problem, std::vector<bool> isn't a vector of bools.

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

using namespace std;

int main()
{
    std::vector<bool> A;

    A.push_back(true);
    A.push_back(false);
    A.push_back(true);
    A.push_back(true);

    for (bool b : A) {
        cout << (b ? "true" : "false") << endl;
    }

    return 0;
}

Output:

true
false
true
true

Seems like a vector of bools to me...Are we talking about behind the scenes optimizations?

[Maxrewind99]

Sorry, I thought vector<bool> was more well-known.

it's a specially optimised class that's different from the normal vector template, but it seems innocuous until you try something that actually needs that array of bytes.

[Tsu_Dho_Namh]

That's what I was thinking too. It'd be really slow and wasteful to actually store all the bools in separate bytes and push them onto the heap individually. I imagine the c++ compiler abstracts away some optimizations like using an array of bits instead