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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-25T18:00:34+00:00

I’m making a program (think: something like Launchy ) that, more or less, goes

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I’m making a program (think: something like Launchy) that, more or less, goes through a bunch of strings and ranks them according to some criteria.

I store the results in a vector<SearchSuggestion>, where the structure is currently defined as follows:

struct SearchSuggestion
{
    std::string path;
    int tag;
};

In my program, I copy the structures (and hence the string) around a lot, due to the need to manipulate lots of file paths and whatnot.

While this causes a noticeable but small delay in release mode, it dramatically slows down the debugging of my program (i.e., several-second pauses in between keystrokes). Looking for the cause, I see almost all of the time is spent with the following stack trace:

ntdll.dll!RtlCompareMemoryUlong()   
ntdll.dll!RtlpAllocateHeap()    
ntdll.dll!RtlAllocateHeap()     
ntdll.dll!RtlDebugAllocateHeap()    
ntdll.dll!string "Enabling heap debug options\n"()  
ntdll.dll!RtlAllocateHeap()     
msvcr90d.dll!_heap_alloc_base(unsigned __int64)     C
msvcr90d.dll!_heap_alloc_dbg_impl(unsigned __int64, int, const char *, int, int *)
msvcr90d.dll!_nh_malloc_dbg_impl(unsigned __int64, int, int, const char *, int, int *)
msvcr90d.dll!_nh_malloc_dbg(unsigned __int64, int, int, const char *, int)
msvcr90d.dll!malloc(unsigned __int64)
msvcr90d.dll!operator new(unsigned __int64)
MyProgram.exe!std::_Allocate<wchar_t>(unsigned __int64, wchar_t *)
MyProgram.exe!std::allocator<wchar_t>::allocate(unsigned __int64)
MyProgram.exe!std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >::_Copy(unsigned __int64, unsigned __int64)
MyProgram.exe!std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >::_Grow(unsigned __int64, bool)
MyProgram.exe!std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >::assign(const std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> > &, unsigned __int64, unsigned __int64)
MyProgram.exe!std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >(const std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> > &)
MyProgram.exe!SearchSuggestion::SearchSuggestion(const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!std::_Construct<SearchSuggestion,SearchSuggestion>(SearchSuggestion *, const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!std::allocator<SearchSuggestion>::construct(SearchSuggestion *, const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!std::_Uninit_copy<SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >(SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> &, std::_Nonscalar_ptr_iterator_tag, std::_Nonscalar_ptr_iterator_tag)
MyProgram.exe!stdext::unchecked_uninitialized_copy<SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >(SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> &)
MyProgram.exe!std::_Uninit_move<SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion>,std::_Undefined_move_tag>(SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> &, std::_Undefined_move_tag, std::_Undefined_move_tag)
MyProgram.exe!stdext::_Unchecked_uninitialized_move<SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,SearchSuggestion * __ptr64,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >(SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> &)
MyProgram.exe!std::vector<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >::_Umove<SearchSuggestion * __ptr64>(SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *, SearchSuggestion *)
MyProgram.exe!std::vector<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >::_Insert_n(std::_Vector_const_iterator<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> > *, unsigned __int64, const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!std::vector<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >::insert(std::_Vector_const_iterator<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> > *, const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!std::vector<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> >::push_back(const SearchSuggestion &)
MyProgram.exe!Appender<std::vector<SearchSuggestion,std::allocator<SearchSuggestion> > >(const wchar_t *, _tfinddata *, void *)
MyProgram.exe!EnumMatches(const std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> > &, const std::vector<std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> >,std::allocator<std::basic_string<wchar_t,std::char_traits<wchar_t>,std::allocator<wchar_t> > > > &, int (const wchar_t *, _tfinddata *, void *)*, void *, int)
...

So it’s pretty obvious that it’s the copying of std::string that’s taking too long, probably due to poor locality of reference.

So now my question is simple:

How can I improve the performance of allocating a lot of small strings?

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    One way would be to stop putting them by value into the SearchSuggestion structure. Instead give every SearchSuggestion a handle to the std::string which represents the path. 

    struct SearchSuggestion {
  int pathId;
  int tag;
};

    This will make the copying within the vector more effecient as it will just be copying around simple ints instead of complex std::string values.

    You can then use an std::map<int, std::string> structure to map path id’s into real path’s.

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