Question

i read in other answers that theres no limit imposed by c++ compiler maximum size of std::vector. i am trying to use vector for one purpose, and in need to have 10^19 items.

typedef struct{
  unsigned long price, weight;
}product;


//inside main
unsigned long long n = 930033404565174954;
vector<product> psorted(n);

the program breaks on the last statement. if i try resize(n) instead of initializing with n then also program breaks with message :

vector<T> too long
std::length_error at memory location

i need to sort the data accourding to price after putting in vector. what should i do ?

Answer 1

std::vector does have limits on how much stuff it can carry. You can query this with std::vector::max_size, which returns the maximum size you can use.

10^19 items.

Do you have 10^19 * sizeof(product) memory? I’m guessing that you don’t have ~138 Exabytes of RAM. Plus, you’d have to be compiling in 64-bit mode to even consider allocating that much. The compiler isn’t breaking; your execution is breaking for trying to allocate too much stuff.