Question

I have a raw pointer which points to an array of data. I would like to wrap this pointer into a container with STL container semantics (e.g. std::vector). Does the STL have any feature which allows this?

e.g.

class my_class
{
public:

   std::some_container<char> get_data() { return std::some_container(my_data, my_data_size);}

private:
   char* my_data;
   size_t my_data_size;
};

EDIT:

I cannot use std::vector directly since the memory is allocated by an external api.

Answer 1

STL doesn’t, boost does:

boost::iterator_range<char*> get_data() { 
    return boost::iterator_range<char*>(my_data, my_data+my_data_size);
}