Question

I am creating a game where i have small “particles”. Their number is changing very frequently (every few seconds) and i’m wondering what is the best way to store them. Is std::vector or std::deque better for this?

Is it okay to reserve space (in that container) that will never get used (I have upper limit)?

Answer 1

Instead of removing a particle you can just replace it with the other one in a vector if order does not matter (and I think it does not)

std::vector<Particle> particles;

when you remove a particle at index i – just fill the empty space with the last one:

particles[i] = particles.back();
particles.pop_back();

You can make it even faster if using vector of pointers.