Question

I’m using some classes and several utility methods that use std:: vector.

Now I need to use each frame a pop_front – push_back method on one of those classes (but they are all linked, and work together so I can’t change only one).

Most of the operations are iterate over all element and push_back operations, so what I should do for the best work is: fork the repository of those classes and utilities, template everything, and use deque or list.

But this means a lot of code rewriting and a lot of testing that will make me miss the deadline.

So I need advice to write an efficient pop_front to a static-size vector (the size will not change).

I’ve found here a way:

template<typename T>
void pop_front(std::vector<T>& vec)
{
   vec.front() = vec.back();
   vec.pop_back();
   vec.front() = vec.back();  // but should this work?
}

And another idea should be:

template<typename T>
void pop_front(std::vector<T>& vec, already_allocated_vector vec1)
{
   vec1.clear();
   copy(vec.begin(), vec.end()-1, vec1.begin());
   copy(vec1.begin(), vec1.end(), vec.begin());
}

What is the faster of these two solutions? Any other solutions?

Answer 1

I would expect:

template<typename T>
void pop_front(std::vector<T>& vec)
{
    assert(!vec.empty());
    vec.front() = std::move(vec.back());
    vec.pop_back();
}

to be the most efficient way of doing this, but it does not maintain the order of the elements in the vector.

If you need to maintain the order of the remaining elements in vec, you can do:

template<typename T>
void pop_front(std::vector<T>& vec)
{
    assert(!vec.empty());
    vec.erase(vec.begin());
}

This will have linear time in the number of elements in vec, but it is the best you can do without changing your data structure.

Neither of these functions will maintain the vector at a constant size, because a pop_front operation will by definition remove an element from a container.