Can I create an std::vector using my pre-existing data instead of it allocating new memory and copying the data?
To be clearer, if I have a memory area (either a c-array or part of another vector or whatever) and I want to provide vector-like access to it, can I create a vector and tell it to use this block of memory?
No, but you could write your own class that does this. Since this would be a fairly common need I wouldn’t be surprised if someone else has done this already.
However the normal C++ way would be to write template code to operate on iterators. You can create iterators for any portion of a vector, or for any portion of a C array (and much else). So writing template code for iterators is probably what you should be doing.