Implementing vector -- Quasar Chunawala
Finding out how to implement features from the standard library can be a useful learning exercise. Quasar Chunawala explores implementing your own version of std::vector.
Implementing vector<T>
by Quasar Chunawala
From the article:
The most fundamental STL data-structure is the
vector. In this article, I am going to explore writing a custom implementation of thevectordata-structure. The standard library implementationstd::vectoris a work of art, it is extremely efficient at managing memory and has been tested ad nauseam. It is much better, in fact, than a homegrown alternative would be.Why then write our own custom
vector?
- Writing a naive implementation is challenging and rewarding. It is a lot of fun!
- Coding up these training implementations, thinking about corner cases, getting your code reviewed, revisiting your design is very effective at understanding the inner workings of STL data-structures and writing good C++ code.
- Its a good opportunity to learn about low-level memory management algorithms.
We are not aiming for an exhaustive representation or implementation, but we will write test cases for all basic functionalities expected out of a
vector-like data-structure.Informally, a
std::vector<T>represents a dynamically allocated array that can grow as needed. As with any array, astd::vector<T>is a sequence of elements of typeTarranged contiguously in memory. We will put our homegrown version ofvector<T>under thedevnamespace.