vector of objects vs vector of pointers

Assignment of read-only location while using set_union to merge two sets, Can't create recursive type `using T = vector`. Download a free copy of C++20/C++17 Ref Cards! Notice that only the first 8 bytes from the second load are used for the first particle. Consenting to these technologies will allow us and our partners to process personal data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. The code will suffer from a memory leak if the programmer does not free up the memory before exiting. We and our partners share information on your use of this website to help improve your experience. and use chronometer parameter that might be passed into the Benchmark Should I store entire objects, or pointers to objects in containers? std::vector I think it would be interesting the discussion and I would like , Jake, GS, Lawton Shoemake, Animus24, Jozo Leko, John Breland. Yes, you created a memory leak by that. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions. C++, Member function returning const reference to vector containing pointers to const objects, Vector of pointers to member functions with multiple objects c++, Vector of objects containing references or pointers. Springbrooks Cirrus is a true cloud financial platform built for local government agency needs. So, to replace a thread object in vector, we first need to join the existing object and then replace it with new one i.e. I've read it, but I didn't find an answer as to which one is faster. New comments cannot be posted and votes cannot be cast. Copyright 2023 www.appsloveworld.com. For the rest it is a balance between "simple and maintainable" vs. "the least CPU cycles ever". If your objects are in CPU cache, then it can be two orders of magnitude faster than when they need to be fetched from the main memory. On the other hand, having pointers may be important if you are working with a class hierarchy and each "Object" may in fact be some derived type that you are just treating as an Object. Each benchmark will be executed 20 times (20 So it might make sense that entities and projectiles store pointers, so they actually point at the same objects. The problem, however, is that you have to keep track of deleting it when removing it from the container. std::vector Returns pointer to the underlying array serving as element storage. Storing pointers to allocated (not scoped) objects is quite convenient. WebVector of objects vs vector of objects pointers I remember during an assignment for a class I took during fall semester that we had to use vectors of pointers instead of just the This may be a performance savings depending on the object size. Can it contain duplicates? What operations with temporary object can prevent its lifetime prolongation? To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Example 6-4. It depends. To have a useful example for the object class I selected the Particle class which can simulate some physical interactions and implements a basic Euler method: The Particle class holds 72 bytes, and theres also some extra array for our further tests (commented out for now). In our When an object is added to the vector, it makes a copy. Windows High Performance Timer for measurement. Container of references / non-nullable pointers, Avoiding preprocessor for mutual exclusive function call in C++20, How Iostream file is located in computer by c++ code during execution, Get text from a button in an application using win32 C++ and hooks. library has thing called problem space where we can define different Are function pointers function objects in C++? If we use default deleter or stateless deleter, then theres no extra memory use. Or maybe you have some story to share? Why is this? detect the same problems of our data as weve noticed with Nonius. So, as usual, its best to measure and measure. No need to call List[id]->~Ball() also no need to set pointer to NULL as you are going to erase the element anyway. A subreddit for all questions related to programming in any language. Particles vector of pointers but not randomized: mean is 90ms and We get similar results to the data we get with Nonius: Celero doesnt give you an option to directly create a graph (as How to erase & delete pointers to objects stored in a vector? We can use the vector of pointers to manage values that are not stored in continuous memory. And also heres the code that benchmarks std::sort: When you allocate hundreds of (smart) pointers one after another, they might end up in memory blocks that are next to each other. For the unique_ptr and shared_ptr examples, is it still covariant, because they all return the "How is the appropriate overloaded output operator for std::string found?" Load data for the second particle. Safety and Robustness are also more important. But in a general case, the control block might lay in a different place, thats why the shared pointer holds two pointers: one to the object and the other one to the control block. github/fenbf/benchmarkLibsTest. Memory access patterns are one of the key factors for writing efficient code that runs over large data sets. As you may expect, the from a std::vector created mySpan1 (1) and the from a pointer and a size created mySpan (2) are equal (3). This effect can be achieved in few ways: use the std::pair of bool and Object, add the bool member to Object structure or handle with pointers to Object, where nullptr will stand for not existing value. Deleting the object will not get rid of the pointers, in neither of the arrays. comparator for sorting a vector contatining pointers to objects of custom class, GDB & C++: Printing vector of pointers to objects. Thanks in particular to Jon Hess, Lakshman, Christian Wittenhorst, Sherhy Pyton, Dendi Suhubdy, Sudhakar Belagurusamy, Richard Sargeant, Rusty Fleming, Ralf Abramowitsch, John Nebel, Mipko, and Alicja Kaminska. Create an account to follow your favorite communities and start taking part in conversations. Accessing the objects takes a performance hit. How to use boost lambda to populate a vector of pointers with new objects, C++ vector of objects vs. vector of pointers to objects. C++ Vector of Pointers - GeeksforGeeks Your email address will not be published. To fully understand why we have such performance discrepancies, we need to talk about memory latency. When you want to read more about std::string_view, read my previous post: "C++17 - What's New in the Library?" A better, yet simple, way to do the above, is to use boost::shared_ptr: The next C++ standard (called C++1x and C++0x commonly) will include std::shared_ptr. the variance is also only a little disturbed. vector::eraseRemoves from the vector container and calls its destructor but If the contained object is a pointer it doesnt take ownership of destroying it. Uups this time we cannot use data loaded in the second cache line read (from the first step), because the second particle data is located somewhere else in the memory! Learn all major features of recent C++ Standards! Or should it be in one class which contains all behaviours? If speed of insertion and removal is your concern, use a different container. 1. Having vector of objects is much slower than a vector of pointers. Lets Create a vector of std::thread objects i.e. Do you try to use memory-efficient data structures? The following program shows how a subspan can be used to modify the referenced objects from a std::vector. Using a reference_wrapper you would declare it like this: Notice that you do not have to dereference the iterator first as in the above approaches. Your email address will not be published. This kind of analysis will hold true up until sizeof(POD) crosses some threshold for your architecture, compiler and usage that you would need to discover experimentally through benchmarking. Containers of pointers let you avoid the slicing problem. My question is simple: why did using a vector of pointers work, and when would you create a vector of objects versus a vector of pointers to those objects? looks at gender info then creates vector of objects, also sets the name and age for each match with the help of pointer. How to approach copying objects with smart pointers as class attributes? Now lets create 2 thread objects using this std::function objects i.e. It all depends on what exactly you're trying to do. code: we can easily test how algorithm performs using 1k of particles, Will it need to have elements added and removed frequently? Vector of pointers are vectors that can hold multiple pointers. C++ template function gets erronous default values, Why does C++ accept multiple prefixes but not postfixes for a variable, Prevent derived classes from hiding non virtual functions from base. Does it need to stay sorted? Around one and a half year ago I did some benchmarks on updating objects Memory leaks; Shallow copies; Memory Leaks This is a type of array that can store the address rather than the value. Each pointer within a vector of pointers points to an address storing a value. Why is RTTI needed for non-polymorphic typeid? Check out the Boost documentation. As vector contains various thread objects, so when this vector object is destructed it will call destructor of all the thread objects in the vector. The difference is in object lifetime and useability; the speed is insignificant. Vector of pointers There, you will also be able to use std::unique_ptr which is faster, as it doesn't allow copying. Return a const vector of const shared pointers to const objects, A vector of pointers to objects that may or may not exist. Pointers However, the items will automatically be deleted when the vector is destructed. Why inbuilt sort is not able to sort map of vectors? Maybe std::vector would be more reasonable way to go. Ok, so what are the differences between each collection? C++: Vector of objects vs. vector of pointers to new objects? First, let's create a synthetic "large" object that has well defined ordering properties by some numeric ID: struct SomeLargeData { SomeLargeData ( int id_) : id (id_) {} int id; int arr [ 100 ]; }; The safest version is to have copies in the vector, but has performance hits depending on the size of the object and the frequency of reallocating the reserved memory area. When a vector is passed to a function, a copy of the vector is created. * Kurtosis Lets see WebA possible solution could be using a vector of smart pointers such as shared_ptr, however at first you should consider whether you want to use a vector of pointers at first place. The difference to the first approach is, that here your objects get destroyed when the vector gets destroyed, whereas above they may live longer than the container, if other shared_ptrs referencing them exist. Make your cross! Before randomisation, we could get the following pointers addresses: The second table shows large distances between neighbour objects. Our particle has the size of 72bytes, so we need two cache line loads (cache line is usually 64 byte): first will load 64 bytes, then another 64 bytes. For example, a std::string and std::vector can be created at modified at compile-time. To compile the above example in linux use. Please enable the javascript to submit this form. Unfortunately I found it hard to create a series of benchmarks: like However its also good to remember that when the object inside a container is heavy it might be better to leave them in the same place, but use some kind of indexing when you sort or perform other algorithms that move elements around. Contracts did not make it into C++20. Cirrus advanced automation frees up personnel to manage strategic initiatives and provides the ability to work from anywhere, on any device, with the highest level of security available. This site contains ads or referral links, which provide me with a commission. The benchmarks was solely done from scratch and theyve used only The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. quite close in the memory address space. thread_local static class is destroyed at invalid address on program exit. Boost MultiIndex - objects or pointers (and how to use them?)? If you create a shared pointer through make_shared, then the control block will be placed next to the memory block for the object. There are many convenience functions to refer to the elements of the span. Disclaimer: Any opinions expressed herein are in no way representative of those of my employers. Yes, it is possible - benchmark it. What std::string? You have not even explained how you intend to use your container. Is passing a reference through function safe? Please check your email and confirm the newsletter subscription. Make your choice! In general you may want to look into iterators when using containers. Then when you call: There is no way how std::vector could know that the object has been deleted. This can be used to operate over to create an array containing multiple pointers. In In Re Man. vArray is nullptr (represented as X), while vCapacity and vSize are 0. Some of the code is repeated, so we could even simplify this a bit more. Additionally, the hardware Prefetcher cannot figure out the pattern - it is random - so there will be a lot of cache misses and stalls. Revisiting An Old Benchmark - Vector of objects or pointers boost::optional. What to do when data for benchmarks. A view does not own data, and it's time to copy, move, assignment it's constant. and "C++17 - Avoid Copying with std::string_view". By a different container, are you talking about a list? it would be good to revisit my old approach and measure the data again. This can simulate, for example, references in C#. They are very random and the CPU hardware prefetcher cannot cope with this pattern. method: Only the code marked as //computation (that internal lambda) will be However, you can choose to make such a This time each element is a pointer to a memory block allocated in a possibly different place in RAM. Do you optimise for memory access patterns? Now lets create a std::function<> object that we will pass to thread object as thread function i.e. An more generic & elegant solution:This solution makes use of for_each & templates as @Billy pointed out in comments: where, myclassVector is your vector containing pointers to myclass class objects. In your case, you do have a good reason, because you actually store a non-owning pointer. << Notes on C++ SFINAE, Modern C++ and C++20 Concepts, Revisiting An Old Benchmark - Vector of objects or pointers. A possible solution could be using a vector of smart pointers such as shared_ptr, however at first you should consider whether you want to use a vector of pointers at first place. When should I use a vector of objects instead of a vector A std::span stands for an object that can refer to a contiguous sequence of objects. As you can see we can even use it for algorithms that uses two If any of the destructed thread object is joinable and not joined then std::terminate() will be called from its destructor.Therefore its necessary to join all the joinable threads in vector before vector is destructed i.e. KVS and SoftRight customers now have the ability to upgrade to Springbrooks new Cirrus cloud platform: Most of the time its better to have objects in a single memory block. The sharing is implemented using some garbage Copyright 2023 www.appsloveworld.com. As pointed out in Maciej Hs answer, your first approach results in object slicing. * Max (us) When an object is added to the vector, it makes a copy. For this blog post, lets assume that Object is just a regular class, without any virtual methods. For 1000 particles we need on the average 2000 cache line reads! Particles vector of pointers: mean is 121ms and variance is not Two cache line reads. If your vector can fit inside a processor's data cache, this will be very efficient. In the second step, we have already 56 bytes of the second particle, so we need another load - 64 bytes - to get the rest. In contrast, std::span automatically deduces the size of contiguous sequences of objects. If all you care about is the objects, then they are more or less equivalent; you just have an extra level of indirection. As a number of comments have pointed out, vector.erase only removes the elements from the vector. * Problem Space get even more flexibility and benchmarks can be executed over different Is comparing two void pointers to different objects defined in C++? Inside the block, there is a place to store the reference counter, the weak counter and also the deleter object. I don't know of any other structures (aside from a tree structure, which is not especially appropriate here). Most processors don't follow pointers when loading their data cache. for 80k of objects was 266% slower than the continuous case. This can help you with your problem in three different ways: Using a shared_ptr could declare your vector like this: This would give you polymorphism and would be used just like it was a normal vector of pointers, but the shared_ptr would do the memory-management for you, destroying the object when the last shared_ptr referencing it is destroyed. Free the pointer (Remove address from variable). It is difficult to say anything definitive about all non-POD types as their operations (e.g. Now, as std::thread objects are move only i.e. There are: The Type-Traits Library: Type Comparisons, And the Winners for the Seven Vouchers for Fedor's Book "The Art of Writing Efficient Programs" are, Template Metaprogramming - Hybrid Programming, Seven Voucher for Fedor G. 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Will you spend more time looping through it than adding elements to it? 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All data and information provided on this site is for informational purposes only. For example, we can try std::variant against regular runtime polymorphism. Some objects are cheaper to construct/copy contruct/move construct/copy/move/destruct than others, regardless of size. Learn how your comment data is processed. So we can Press J to jump to the feed. Otherwise, it is generally better not to store pointers for exactly the reason that you mentioned (automatic deallocation). The rest - 56b - are the bytes of the second particle. Revisiting An Old Benchmark - Vector of objects or pointers and returns the pointer to the vector of objects to a receiver in main function. Vector of objects vs vector of objects pointers : r/learnprogramming interested in more professional benchmarking Using vectors of pointers #include #include using namespace std; static const int NUM_OBJECTS = 10; WebYou use a vector of pointers when you need a heterogeneous container of polymorphic objects, or your objects need to persist against operations performed on the vector, for 2k 10k without writing code separately. 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The pointer is such that range [data (), data () + size ()) is always a valid range, even if the container is empty ( data () is not dereferenceable in that case). In other words, for each particle, we will need 1.125 cache line reads. Sometimes you want a vector of objects, sometimes you want a vector of pointers to objects, and sometimes you want something else entirely. When we pass an array to a function, a pointer is actually passed. Here is a quote from Eric Nieblersrange-v3 implementation,which is the base for the C++20 ranges: "Views are composable adaptations of ranges where the adaptation happens lazily as the view is iterated." The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Using std::unique_ptr with containers in c++0x is similar to the ptr_container library in boost. Learn all major features of recent C++ Standards! This does however only work if the lifetime of your objects is managed elsewhere and is guaranteed to be longer than that of the vector. Overloading, variadic functions and bool type, Unable to discriminate template specialization with enable_if and is_base_of. A vector of Objects has first, initial performance hit. Heres the corresponding graph (this time I am using mean value of of In the article, weve done several tests that compared adjacent data structures vs a case with pointers inside a container. when working with a vector of pointers versus a vector of value types. In C++, a variable is the variable that it is representing. What i was missing was the std::move() function and I wasnt able to find it for months now. A pointer to a vector is very rarely useful - a vector is cheap to construct and destruct. For elements in the vector , there's no correct ans WebThe difference to the first approach is, that here your objects get destroyed when the vector gets destroyed, whereas above they may live longer than the container, if other Make your choice! For example, if the difference between the worst performing data structure and the best is 10 nanoseconds, that means that you will need to perform at least 1E+6 times in order for the savings to be significant. // Code inside this loop is measured repeatedly, << Talk summary: The Last Thing D Needs by Scott Meyers, Flexible particle system - Emitter and Generators >>, Extra note on subsequent memory allocations, https://github.com/fenbf/benchmarkLibsTest, Revisiting An Old Benchmark - Vector of objects or pointers. 1. The update() method is simple, has only several arithmetic operations and a single branch. libraries In the generated CSV there are more data than you could see in the 10k. So the vector manages it for you instead of just managing the pointer and letting you deal with the pointed object. Mutual return types of member functions (C++), Catching an exception class within a template. But CPUs are quite smart and will additionally use a thing called Hardware Prefetcher. 0}. The values for a given benchmark execution is actually the min of all There are 2 deferences before you get to the object. This way, an object will be copied only when necessary, and shared otherwise. * Skewness This time, however, we have a little more overhead compared to the case with unique_ptr. Insert the address of the variable inside the vector. appears that if you create one pointer after another they might end up C++ Core Guidelines: More Non-Rules and Myths, More Rules about the Regular Expression Library, C++ Core Guidelines: Improved Performance with Iostreams, Stuff you should know about In- and Output with Streams, More special Friends with std::map and std::unordered_map, C++ Core Guidelines: std::array and std::vector are your Friends, C++ Core Guidelines: The Standard Library, C++ Core Guidelines: The Remaining Rules about Source Files, The new pdf bundle is available: C++ Core Guidlines - Templates and Generic Programming, Types-, Non-Types, and Templates as Template Parameters, C++ Core Guidelines: Surprise included with the Specialisation of Function Templates, C++ Core Guidelines: Other Template Rules, C++ Core Guidelines: Programming at Compile Time with constexpr, C++ Core Guidelines: Programming at Compile Time with Type-Traits (The Second), C++ Core Guidelines: Programming at Compile Time with the Type-Traits, C++ Core Guidelines: Programming at Compile Time, C++ Core Guidelines: Rules for Template Metaprogramming, C++ Core Guidelines: Rules for Variadic Templates, C++ Core Guidelines: Rules for Templates and Hierarchies, C++ Core Guidelines: Ordering of User-Defined Types, C++ Core Guidelines: Template Definitions, C++ Core Guidelines: Surprises with Argument-Dependent Lookup, C++ Core Guidelines: Regular and SemiRegular Types, C++ Core Guidelines: Pass Function Objects as Operations, I'm Proud to Present: The C++ Standard Library including C++14 & C++17, C++ Core Guidelines: Definition of Concepts, the Second, C++ Core Guidelines: Rules for the Definition of Concepts, C++ Core Guidelines: Rules for the Usage of Concepts. Return pointer to a vector of objects Larger objects will take more time to copy, as well as complex or compound objects. Check out this lecture about linked lists by Bjarne Stroustrup: Thank you for your understanding. WebVector of Objects vs Vector of Pointers Updated. Subscribe for the news. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQs6IC-vgmo, Here is an excelent lecture by Scott Meyers about CPU caches: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WDIkqP4JbkE.

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