Question

I’m writing a container and would like to permit the user to use custom allocators, but I can’t tell if I should pass allocators around by reference or by value.

Is it guaranteed (or at least, a reasonable assumption to make) that an allocator object will not contain its memory pool directly, and hence it would be OK to copy an allocator and expect the memory pools of the allocators to be cross-compatible? Or do I always need to pass allocators by reference?

(I have found that passing by reference harms performance by a factor of > 2 because the compiler starts worrying about aliasing, so it makes a whether or not I can rely on this assumption.)

Answer 1

In C++11 section 17.6.3.5 Allocator requirements [allocator.requirements] specifies the requirements for conforming allocators. Among the requirements are:

X                    an Allocator class for type T
...
a, a1, a2            values of type X&
...
a1 == a2             bool          returns true only if storage
                                   allocated from each can be
                                   deallocated via the other.
                                   operator== shall be reflexive,
                                   symmetric, and transitive, and
                                   shall not exit via an exception.
...
X a1(a);                           Shall not exit via an exception.
                                   post: a1 == a

I.e. when you copy an allocator, the two copies are required to be able to delete each other’s pointers.

Conceivably one could put internal buffers into allocators, but copies would have to keep a list of other’s buffers. Or perhaps an allocator could have an invariant that deallocation is always a no-op because the pointer always comes from an internal buffer (either from your own, or from some other copy).

But whatever the scheme, copies must be “cross-compatible”.

Update

Here is a C++11 conforming allocator that does the “short string optimization”. To make it C++11 conforming, I had to put the “internal” buffer external to the allocator so that copies are equal:

#include <cstddef>

template <std::size_t N>
class arena
{
    static const std::size_t alignment = 16;
    alignas(alignment) char buf_[N];
    char* ptr_;

    std::size_t 
    align_up(std::size_t n) {return n + (alignment-1) & ~(alignment-1);}

public:
    arena() : ptr_(buf_) {}
    arena(const arena&) = delete;
    arena& operator=(const arena&) = delete;

    char* allocate(std::size_t n)
    {
        n = align_up(n);
        if (buf_ + N - ptr_ >= n)
        {
            char* r = ptr_;
            ptr_ += n;
            return r;
        }
        return static_cast<char*>(::operator new(n));
    }
    void deallocate(char* p, std::size_t n)
    {
        n = align_up(n);
        if (buf_ <= p && p < buf_ + N)
        {
            if (p + n == ptr_)
                ptr_ = p;
        }
        else
            ::operator delete(p);
    }
};

template <class T, std::size_t N>
class stack_allocator
{
    arena<N>& a_;
public:
    typedef T value_type;

public:
    template <class U> struct rebind {typedef stack_allocator<U, N> other;};

    explicit stack_allocator(arena<N>& a) : a_(a) {}
    template <class U>
        stack_allocator(const stack_allocator<U, N>& a)
            : a_(a.a_) {}
    stack_allocator(const stack_allocator&) = default;
    stack_allocator& operator=(const stack_allocator&) = delete;

    T* allocate(std::size_t n)
    {
        return reinterpret_cast<T*>(a_.allocate(n*sizeof(T)));
    }
    void deallocate(T* p, std::size_t n)
    {
        a_.deallocate(reinterpret_cast<char*>(p), n*sizeof(T));
    }

    template <class T1, std::size_t N1, class U, std::size_t M>
    friend
    bool
    operator==(const stack_allocator<T1, N1>& x, const stack_allocator<U, M>& y);

    template <class U, std::size_t M> friend class stack_allocator;
};

template <class T, std::size_t N, class U, std::size_t M>
bool
operator==(const stack_allocator<T, N>& x, const stack_allocator<U, M>& y)
{
    return N == M && &x.a_ == &y.a_;
}

template <class T, std::size_t N, class U, std::size_t M>
bool
operator!=(const stack_allocator<T, N>& x, const stack_allocator<U, M>& y)
{
    return !(x == y);
}

It could be used like this:

#include <vector>

template <class T, std::size_t N> using A = stack_allocator<T, N>;
template <class T, std::size_t N> using Vector = std::vector<T, stack_allocator<T, N>>;

int main()
{
    const std::size_t N = 1024;
    arena<N> a;
    Vector<int, N> v{A<int, N>(a)};
    v.reserve(100);
    for (int i = 0; i < 100; ++i)
        v.push_back(i);
    Vector<int, N> v2 = std::move(v);
    v = v2;
}

All allocations for the above problem are drawn from the local arena which is 1 Kb in size. You should be able to pass this allocator around by value or by reference.