Unifying the types.

Thanks for the memory (allocator)

by Glennan Carnie

From the article:

One of the design goals of Modern C++ is to find new – better, more effective – ways of doing things we could already do in C++.  Some might argue this is one of the more frustrating aspects of Modern C++ – if it works, don’t fix it (alternatively: why use lightbulbs when we have perfectly good candles?!)

This time we’ll look at a new aspect of Modern C++:  the Allocator model for dynamic containers.  This is currently experimental, but has been accepted into C++20.

The Allocator model allows programmers to provide their own memory management strategy in place of their default library implementation.  Although it is not specified by the C++ standard, many implementations use malloc/free.

Understanding this feature is important if you work on a high-integrity, or safety-critical, project where your project standards say ‘no’ to malloc...