I am trying to efficiently make a copy of a vector. I see two possible approaches:

std::vector<int> copyVecFast1(const std::vector<int>& original)
{ std::vector<int> newVec; newVec.reserve(original.size()); std::copy(original.begin(), original.end(), std::back_inserter(newVec)); return newVec;
}
std::vector<int> copyVecFast2(std::vector<int>& original)
{ std::vector<int> newVec; newVec.swap(original); return newVec;
}

Which of these is preferred, and why? I am looking for the most efficient solution that will avoid unnecessary copying.

1

6 Answers

They aren't the same though, are they? One is a copy, the other is a swap. Hence the function names.

My favourite is:

a = b;

Where a and b are vectors.

10

Your second example does not work if you send the argument by reference. Did you mean

void copyVecFast(vec<int> original) // no reference
{ vector<int> new_; new_.swap(original);
}

That would work, but an easier way is

vector<int> new_(original);

4

This is another valid way to make a copy of a vector, just use its constructor:

std::vector<int> newvector(oldvector);

This is even simpler than using std::copy to walk the entire vector from start to finish to std::back_insert them into the new vector.

That being said, your .swap() one is not a copy, instead it swaps the two vectors. You would modify the original to not contain anything anymore! Which is not a copy.

1

Direct answer:

• Use a = operator

We can use the public member function std::vector::operator= of the container std::vector for assigning values from a vector to another.

• Use a constructor function

Besides, a constructor function also makes sense. A constructor function with another vector as parameter(e.g. x) constructs a container with a copy of each of the elements in x , in the same order.

Caution:

• Do not use std::vector::swap

std::vector::swap is not copying a vector to another, it is actually swapping elements of two vectors, just as its name suggests. In other words, the source vector to copy from is modified after std::vector::swap is called, which is probably not what you are expected.

• Deep or shallow copy?

If the elements in the source vector are pointers to other data, then a deep copy is wanted sometimes.

According to wikipedia:

A deep copy, meaning that fields are dereferenced: rather than references to objects being copied, new copy objects are created for any referenced objects, and references to these placed in B.

Actually, there is no currently a built-in way in C++ to do a deep copy. All of the ways mentioned above are shallow. If a deep copy is necessary, you can traverse a vector and make copy of the references manually. Alternatively, an iterator can be considered for traversing. Discussion on iterator is beyond this question.

References

The page of std::vector on cplusplus.com

new_vector.assign(old_vector.begin(),old_vector.end()); // Method 1
new_vector = old_vector; // Method 2

you should not use swap to copy vectors, it would change the "original" vector.

pass the original as a parameter to the new instead.