Apparently, there are two most obvious ways to clear std::queue: swapping with empty object and assignment to empty object.
I would suggest using assignment because it simply faster, more readable, and unambiguous.
I measured performance using following simple code and I found that swapping in C++03 version works 70-80% slower than assignment to an empty object. In C++11 there is no difference in performance, however. Anyway, I would go with assignment.
#include <algorithm>
#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
#include <queue>
#include <vector>
int main()
{
std::cout << "Started" << std::endl;
std::queue<int> q;
for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i)
{
q.push(i);
}
std::vector<std::queue<int> > queues(10000, q);
const std::clock_t begin = std::clock();
for (std::vector<int>::size_type i = 0; i < queues.size(); ++i)
{
// OK in all versions
queues[i] = std::queue<int>();
// OK since C++11
// std::queue<int>().swap(queues[i]);
// OK before C++11 but slow
// std::queue<int> empty;
// std::swap(empty, queues[i]);
}
const double elapsed = double(clock() - begin) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;
std::cout << elapsed << std::endl;
return 0;
}