Using arrays or std vectors in C what s the performance gap

Question

In our C   course they suggest not to use C   arrays on new projects anymore  As far as I know Stroustroup himself suggests not to use arrays  But are there significant performance differences

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Vectors are arrays under the hood   The performance is the same   One place where you can run into a performance issue  is not sizing the vector correctly to begin with   As a vector fills  it will resize itself  and that can imply  a new array allocation  followed by n copy constructors  followed by about n destructor calls  followed by an array delete   If your construct destruct is expensive  you are much better off making the vector the correct size to begin with   There is a simple way to demonstrate this   Create a simple class that shows when it is constructed destroyed copied assigned   Create a vector of these things  and start pushing them on the back end of the vector   When the vector fills  there will be a cascade of activity as the vector resizes    Then try it again with the vector sized to the expected number of elements    You will see the difference

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About duli s contribution with my own measurements  The conclusion is that arrays of integers are faster than vectors of integers  5 times in my example   However  arrays and vectors are arround the same speed for more complex   not aligned data

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If you do not need to dynamically adjust the size  you have the memory overhead of saving the capacity  one pointer size t   That s it

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The performance difference between the two is very much implementation dependent - if you compare a badly implemented std  vector to an optimal array implementation  the array would win  but turn it around and the vector would win     As long as you compare apples with apples  either both the array and the vector have a fixed number of elements  or both get resized dynamically  I would think that the performance difference is negligible as long as you follow got STL coding practise  Don t forget that using standard C   containers also allows you to make use of the pre-rolled algorithms that are part of the standard C   library and most of them are likely to be better performing than the average implementation of the same algorithm you build yourself   That said  IMHO the vector wins in a debug scenario with a debug STL as most STL implementations with a proper debug mode can at least highlight cathc the typical mistakes made by people when working with standard containers   Oh  and don t forget that the array and the vector share the same memory layout so you can use vectors to pass data to legacy C or C   code that expects basic arrays  Keep in mind that most bets are off in that scenario  though  and you re dealing with raw memory again

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I d argue that the primary concern isn t performance  but safety  You can make a lot of mistakes with arrays  consider resizing  for example   where a vector would save you a lot of pain

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Using C   arrays with new  that is  using dynamic arrays  should be avoided  There is the problem you have to keep track of the size  and you need to delete them manually and do all sort of housekeeping    Using arrays on the stack is also discouraged because you don t have range checking  and passing the array around will lose any information about its size  array to pointer conversion   You should use boost  array in that case  which wraps a C   array in a small class and provides a size function and iterators to iterate over it   Now the std  vector vs  native C   arrays  taken from the internet       Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing      and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers      Assembly code was generated by gcc 4 1 0 invoked with  g   -O3 -S  on a     x86 64-suse-linux machine    include  lt vector gt   struct S     int padding     std  vector lt int gt  v    int   p    std  vector lt int gt   iterator i      int pointer index  S  amp  s    return s p 3          movq    32  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret  int vector index  S  amp  s    return s v 3          movq    8  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Indexing a vector is the same damn thing as indexing a pointer   int pointer deref  S  amp  s    return  s p         movq    32  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret  int iterator deref  S  amp  s    return  s i         movq    40  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Dereferencing a vector iterator is the same damn thing     as dereferencing a pointer   void pointer increment  S  amp  s      s p         addq     4  32  rdi       ret  void iterator increment  S  amp  s      s i         addq     4  40  rdi       ret     Conclusion  Incrementing a vector iterator is the same damn thing as     incrementing a pointer    Note  If you allocate arrays with new and allocate non-class objects  like plain int  or classes without a user defined constructor and you don t want to have your elements initialized initially  using new-allocated arrays can have performance advantages because std  vector initializes all elements to default values  0 for int  for example  on construction  credits to  bernie for reminding me

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I d argue that the primary concern isn t performance  but safety  You can make a lot of mistakes with arrays  consider resizing  for example   where a vector would save you a lot of pain

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Assuming a fixed-length array  e g  int  v   new int 1000   vs std  vector lt int gt  v 1000    with the size of v being kept fixed at 1000   the only performance consideration that really matters  or at least mattered to me when I was in a similar dilemma  is the speed of access to an element  I looked up the STL s vector code  and here is what I found   const reference operator   size type   n  const   return   this- gt  M impl  M start     n       This function will most certainly be inlined by the compiler  So  as long as the only thing that you plan to do with v is access its elements with operator    it seems like there shouldn t really be any difference in performance

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STL is a heavily optimized library  In fact  it s even suggested to use STL in games where high performance might be needed  Arrays are too error prone to be used in day to day tasks  Today s compilers are also very smart and can really produce excellent code with STL  If you know what you are doing  STL can usually provide the necessary performance  For example by initializing vectors to required size  if you know from start   you can basically achieve the array performance  However  there might be cases where you still need arrays  When interfacing with low level code  i e  assembly  or old libraries that require arrays  you might not be able to use vectors

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If you do not need to dynamically adjust the size  you have the memory overhead of saving the capacity  one pointer size t   That s it

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Vectors use a tiny bit more memory than arrays since they contain the size of the array   They also increase the hard disk size of programs and probably the memory footprint of programs   These increases are tiny  but may matter if you re working with an embedded system   Though most places where these differences matter are places where you would use C rather than C

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There is definitely a performance impact to using an std  vector vs a raw array when you want an uninitialized buffer  e g  to use as destination for memcpy     An std  vector will initialize all its elements using the default constructor  A raw array will not  The c   spec for the std vector constructor taking a count argument  it s the third form  states    Constructs a new container from a variety of data sources  optionally using a user supplied allocator alloc     Constructs the container with count default-inserted instances of T  No copies are made     Complexity   2-3  Linear in count  A raw array does not incur this initialization cost  Note that with a custom allocator  it is possible to avoid  quot initialization quot  of the vector s elements  i e  to use default initialization instead of value initialization   See these questions for more details   Is this behavior of vector  resize size type n  under C  11 and Boost Container correct  How can I avoid std  vector lt  gt  to initialize all its elements

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Preamble for micro-optimizer people Remember    quot Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about  or worrying about  the speed of noncritical parts of their programs  and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered  We should forget about small efficiencies  say about 97  of the time  premature optimization is the root of all evil  Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3  quot     Thanks to metamorphosis for the full quote  Don t use a C array instead of a vector  or whatever  just because you believe it s faster as it is supposed to be lower-level  You would be wrong  Use by default vector  or the safe container adapted to your need   and then if your profiler says it is a problem  see if you can optimize it  either by using a better algorithm  or changing container  This said  we can go back to the original question  Static Dynamic Array  The C   array classes are better behaved than the low-level C array because they know a lot about themselves  and can answer questions C arrays can t  They are able to clean after themselves  And more importantly  they are usually written using templates and or inlining  which means that what appears to a lot of code in debug resolves to little or no code produced in release build  meaning no difference with their built-in less safe competition  All in all  it falls on two categories  Dynamic arrays Using a pointer to a malloc-ed new-ed array will be at best as fast as the std  vector version  and a lot less safe  see litb s post   So use a std  vector  Static arrays Using a static array will be at best   as fast as the std  array version and a lot less safe   So use a std  array  Uninitialized memory Sometimes  using a vector instead of a raw buffer incurs a visible cost because the vector will initialize the buffer at construction  while the code it replaces didn t  as remarked bernie by in his answer  If this is the case  then you can handle it by using a unique ptr instead of a vector or  if the case is not exceptional in your codeline  actually write a class buffer owner that will own that memory  and give you easy and safe access to it  including bonuses like resizing it  using realloc    or whatever you need

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The following simple test   C   Array vs Vector performance test explanation  contradicts the conclusions from  Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing  and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers     There must be a difference between the arrays and vectors  The test says so    just try it  the code is there

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If you compile the software in debug mode  many compilers will not inline the accessor functions of the vector   This will make the stl vector implementation much slower in circumstances where performance is an issue   It will also make the code easier to debug since you can see in the debugger how much memory was allocated   In optimized mode  I would expect the stl vector to approach the efficiency of an array   This is since many of the vector methods are now inlined

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I d argue that the primary concern isn t performance  but safety  You can make a lot of mistakes with arrays  consider resizing  for example   where a vector would save you a lot of pain

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STL is a heavily optimized library  In fact  it s even suggested to use STL in games where high performance might be needed  Arrays are too error prone to be used in day to day tasks  Today s compilers are also very smart and can really produce excellent code with STL  If you know what you are doing  STL can usually provide the necessary performance  For example by initializing vectors to required size  if you know from start   you can basically achieve the array performance  However  there might be cases where you still need arrays  When interfacing with low level code  i e  assembly  or old libraries that require arrays  you might not be able to use vectors

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Preamble for micro-optimizer people Remember    quot Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about  or worrying about  the speed of noncritical parts of their programs  and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered  We should forget about small efficiencies  say about 97  of the time  premature optimization is the root of all evil  Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3  quot     Thanks to metamorphosis for the full quote  Don t use a C array instead of a vector  or whatever  just because you believe it s faster as it is supposed to be lower-level  You would be wrong  Use by default vector  or the safe container adapted to your need   and then if your profiler says it is a problem  see if you can optimize it  either by using a better algorithm  or changing container  This said  we can go back to the original question  Static Dynamic Array  The C   array classes are better behaved than the low-level C array because they know a lot about themselves  and can answer questions C arrays can t  They are able to clean after themselves  And more importantly  they are usually written using templates and or inlining  which means that what appears to a lot of code in debug resolves to little or no code produced in release build  meaning no difference with their built-in less safe competition  All in all  it falls on two categories  Dynamic arrays Using a pointer to a malloc-ed new-ed array will be at best as fast as the std  vector version  and a lot less safe  see litb s post   So use a std  vector  Static arrays Using a static array will be at best   as fast as the std  array version and a lot less safe   So use a std  array  Uninitialized memory Sometimes  using a vector instead of a raw buffer incurs a visible cost because the vector will initialize the buffer at construction  while the code it replaces didn t  as remarked bernie by in his answer  If this is the case  then you can handle it by using a unique ptr instead of a vector or  if the case is not exceptional in your codeline  actually write a class buffer owner that will own that memory  and give you easy and safe access to it  including bonuses like resizing it  using realloc    or whatever you need

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To respond to something Mehrdad said      However  there might be cases where   you still need arrays  When   interfacing with low level code  i e    assembly  or old libraries that   require arrays  you might not be able   to use vectors    Not true at all  Vectors degrade nicely into arrays pointers if you use   vector lt double gt  vector  vector push back 42    double  array    amp   vector begin         pass the array to whatever low-level code you have   This works for all major STL implementations  In the next standard  it will be required to work  even though it does just fine today

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If you re using vectors to represent multi-dimensional behavior  there is a performance hit   Do 2d  vectors cause a performance hit   The gist is that there s a small amount of overhead with each sub-vector having size information  and there will not necessarily be serialization of data  as there is with multi-dimensional c arrays    This lack of serialization can offer greater than micro optimization opportunities   If you re doing multi-dimensional arrays  it may be best to just extend std  vector and roll your own get set resize bits function

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You have even fewer reasons to use plain arrays in C  11   There are 3 kind of arrays in nature from fastest to slowest  depending on the features they have  of course the quality of implementation can make things really fast even for case 3 in the list     Static with size known at compile time  --- std  array lt T  N gt  Dynamic with size known at runtime and never resized  The typical optimization here is  that if the array can be allocated in the stack directly  -- Not available  Maybe dynarray in C   TS after C  14  In C there are VLAs  Dynamic and resizable at runtime  --- std  vector lt T gt    For 1  plain static arrays with fixed number of elements  use std  array lt T  N gt  in C  11   For 2  fixed size arrays specified at runtime  but that won t change their size  there is discussion in C  14 but it has been moved to a technical specification and made out of C  14 finally   For 3  std  vector lt T gt  will usually ask for memory in the heap  This could have performance consequences  though you could use std  vector lt T  MyAlloc lt T gt  gt  to improve the situation with a custom allocator  The advantage compared to T mytype     new MyType n   is that you can resize it and that it will not decay to a pointer  as plain arrays do   Use the standard library types mentioned to avoid  arrays decaying to pointers  You will save debugging time and the performance is exactly the same as with plain arrays if you use the same set of features

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The performance difference between the two is very much implementation dependent - if you compare a badly implemented std  vector to an optimal array implementation  the array would win  but turn it around and the vector would win     As long as you compare apples with apples  either both the array and the vector have a fixed number of elements  or both get resized dynamically  I would think that the performance difference is negligible as long as you follow got STL coding practise  Don t forget that using standard C   containers also allows you to make use of the pre-rolled algorithms that are part of the standard C   library and most of them are likely to be better performing than the average implementation of the same algorithm you build yourself   That said  IMHO the vector wins in a debug scenario with a debug STL as most STL implementations with a proper debug mode can at least highlight cathc the typical mistakes made by people when working with standard containers   Oh  and don t forget that the array and the vector share the same memory layout so you can use vectors to pass data to legacy C or C   code that expects basic arrays  Keep in mind that most bets are off in that scenario  though  and you re dealing with raw memory again

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About duli s contribution with my own measurements  The conclusion is that arrays of integers are faster than vectors of integers  5 times in my example   However  arrays and vectors are arround the same speed for more complex   not aligned data

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There might be some edge case where you have a vector access inside an inline function inside an inline function  where you ve gone beyond what the compiler will inline and it will force a function call   That would be so rare as to not be worth worrying about - in general I would agree with litb   I m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet - don t worry about performance until it has been proven to be a problem  then benchmark

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If you do not need to dynamically adjust the size  you have the memory overhead of saving the capacity  one pointer size t   That s it

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Go with STL  There s no performance penalty   The algorithms are very efficient and they do a good job of handling the kinds of details that most of us would not think about

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The performance difference between the two is very much implementation dependent - if you compare a badly implemented std  vector to an optimal array implementation  the array would win  but turn it around and the vector would win     As long as you compare apples with apples  either both the array and the vector have a fixed number of elements  or both get resized dynamically  I would think that the performance difference is negligible as long as you follow got STL coding practise  Don t forget that using standard C   containers also allows you to make use of the pre-rolled algorithms that are part of the standard C   library and most of them are likely to be better performing than the average implementation of the same algorithm you build yourself   That said  IMHO the vector wins in a debug scenario with a debug STL as most STL implementations with a proper debug mode can at least highlight cathc the typical mistakes made by people when working with standard containers   Oh  and don t forget that the array and the vector share the same memory layout so you can use vectors to pass data to legacy C or C   code that expects basic arrays  Keep in mind that most bets are off in that scenario  though  and you re dealing with raw memory again

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Go with STL  There s no performance penalty   The algorithms are very efficient and they do a good job of handling the kinds of details that most of us would not think about

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The following simple test   C   Array vs Vector performance test explanation  contradicts the conclusions from  Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing  and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers     There must be a difference between the arrays and vectors  The test says so    just try it  the code is there

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Using C   arrays with new  that is  using dynamic arrays  should be avoided  There is the problem you have to keep track of the size  and you need to delete them manually and do all sort of housekeeping    Using arrays on the stack is also discouraged because you don t have range checking  and passing the array around will lose any information about its size  array to pointer conversion   You should use boost  array in that case  which wraps a C   array in a small class and provides a size function and iterators to iterate over it   Now the std  vector vs  native C   arrays  taken from the internet       Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing      and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers      Assembly code was generated by gcc 4 1 0 invoked with  g   -O3 -S  on a     x86 64-suse-linux machine    include  lt vector gt   struct S     int padding     std  vector lt int gt  v    int   p    std  vector lt int gt   iterator i      int pointer index  S  amp  s    return s p 3          movq    32  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret  int vector index  S  amp  s    return s v 3          movq    8  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Indexing a vector is the same damn thing as indexing a pointer   int pointer deref  S  amp  s    return  s p         movq    32  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret  int iterator deref  S  amp  s    return  s i         movq    40  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Dereferencing a vector iterator is the same damn thing     as dereferencing a pointer   void pointer increment  S  amp  s      s p         addq     4  32  rdi       ret  void iterator increment  S  amp  s      s i         addq     4  40  rdi       ret     Conclusion  Incrementing a vector iterator is the same damn thing as     incrementing a pointer    Note  If you allocate arrays with new and allocate non-class objects  like plain int  or classes without a user defined constructor and you don t want to have your elements initialized initially  using new-allocated arrays can have performance advantages because std  vector initializes all elements to default values  0 for int  for example  on construction  credits to  bernie for reminding me

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The performance difference between the two is very much implementation dependent - if you compare a badly implemented std  vector to an optimal array implementation  the array would win  but turn it around and the vector would win     As long as you compare apples with apples  either both the array and the vector have a fixed number of elements  or both get resized dynamically  I would think that the performance difference is negligible as long as you follow got STL coding practise  Don t forget that using standard C   containers also allows you to make use of the pre-rolled algorithms that are part of the standard C   library and most of them are likely to be better performing than the average implementation of the same algorithm you build yourself   That said  IMHO the vector wins in a debug scenario with a debug STL as most STL implementations with a proper debug mode can at least highlight cathc the typical mistakes made by people when working with standard containers   Oh  and don t forget that the array and the vector share the same memory layout so you can use vectors to pass data to legacy C or C   code that expects basic arrays  Keep in mind that most bets are off in that scenario  though  and you re dealing with raw memory again

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Sometimes arrays are indeed better than vectors  If you are always manipulating a fixed length set of objects  arrays are better  Consider the following code snippets   int main     int v 3   v 0  1  v 1  2 v 2  3  int sum  int starttime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  starttime  lt  lt  endl  for  int i 0 i lt 50000 i    for  int j 0 j lt 10000 j      X x v   sum  x first      int endtime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  endtime  lt  lt  endl  cout  lt  lt  endtime - starttime  lt  lt  endl       where the vector version of X is  class X   vector lt int gt  vec  public  X const vector lt int gt  amp  v   vec   v   int first     return vec 0         and the array version of X is   class X   int f 3    public  X int a     f 0  a 0   f 1  a 1  f 2  a 2    int first     return f 0         The array version will of main   will be faster because we are avoiding the overhead of  new  everytime in the inner loop    This code was posted to comp lang c   by me

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STL is a heavily optimized library  In fact  it s even suggested to use STL in games where high performance might be needed  Arrays are too error prone to be used in day to day tasks  Today s compilers are also very smart and can really produce excellent code with STL  If you know what you are doing  STL can usually provide the necessary performance  For example by initializing vectors to required size  if you know from start   you can basically achieve the array performance  However  there might be cases where you still need arrays  When interfacing with low level code  i e  assembly  or old libraries that require arrays  you might not be able to use vectors

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To respond to something Mehrdad said      However  there might be cases where   you still need arrays  When   interfacing with low level code  i e    assembly  or old libraries that   require arrays  you might not be able   to use vectors    Not true at all  Vectors degrade nicely into arrays pointers if you use   vector lt double gt  vector  vector push back 42    double  array    amp   vector begin         pass the array to whatever low-level code you have   This works for all major STL implementations  In the next standard  it will be required to work  even though it does just fine today

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There might be some edge case where you have a vector access inside an inline function inside an inline function  where you ve gone beyond what the compiler will inline and it will force a function call   That would be so rare as to not be worth worrying about - in general I would agree with litb   I m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet - don t worry about performance until it has been proven to be a problem  then benchmark

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Vectors are arrays under the hood   The performance is the same   One place where you can run into a performance issue  is not sizing the vector correctly to begin with   As a vector fills  it will resize itself  and that can imply  a new array allocation  followed by n copy constructors  followed by about n destructor calls  followed by an array delete   If your construct destruct is expensive  you are much better off making the vector the correct size to begin with   There is a simple way to demonstrate this   Create a simple class that shows when it is constructed destroyed copied assigned   Create a vector of these things  and start pushing them on the back end of the vector   When the vector fills  there will be a cascade of activity as the vector resizes    Then try it again with the vector sized to the expected number of elements    You will see the difference

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If you compile the software in debug mode  many compilers will not inline the accessor functions of the vector   This will make the stl vector implementation much slower in circumstances where performance is an issue   It will also make the code easier to debug since you can see in the debugger how much memory was allocated   In optimized mode  I would expect the stl vector to approach the efficiency of an array   This is since many of the vector methods are now inlined

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STL is a heavily optimized library  In fact  it s even suggested to use STL in games where high performance might be needed  Arrays are too error prone to be used in day to day tasks  Today s compilers are also very smart and can really produce excellent code with STL  If you know what you are doing  STL can usually provide the necessary performance  For example by initializing vectors to required size  if you know from start   you can basically achieve the array performance  However  there might be cases where you still need arrays  When interfacing with low level code  i e  assembly  or old libraries that require arrays  you might not be able to use vectors

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Vectors are arrays under the hood   The performance is the same   One place where you can run into a performance issue  is not sizing the vector correctly to begin with   As a vector fills  it will resize itself  and that can imply  a new array allocation  followed by n copy constructors  followed by about n destructor calls  followed by an array delete   If your construct destruct is expensive  you are much better off making the vector the correct size to begin with   There is a simple way to demonstrate this   Create a simple class that shows when it is constructed destroyed copied assigned   Create a vector of these things  and start pushing them on the back end of the vector   When the vector fills  there will be a cascade of activity as the vector resizes    Then try it again with the vector sized to the expected number of elements    You will see the difference

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Assuming a fixed-length array  e g  int  v   new int 1000   vs std  vector lt int gt  v 1000    with the size of v being kept fixed at 1000   the only performance consideration that really matters  or at least mattered to me when I was in a similar dilemma  is the speed of access to an element  I looked up the STL s vector code  and here is what I found   const reference operator   size type   n  const   return   this- gt  M impl  M start     n       This function will most certainly be inlined by the compiler  So  as long as the only thing that you plan to do with v is access its elements with operator    it seems like there shouldn t really be any difference in performance

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There might be some edge case where you have a vector access inside an inline function inside an inline function  where you ve gone beyond what the compiler will inline and it will force a function call   That would be so rare as to not be worth worrying about - in general I would agree with litb   I m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet - don t worry about performance until it has been proven to be a problem  then benchmark

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Go with STL  There s no performance penalty   The algorithms are very efficient and they do a good job of handling the kinds of details that most of us would not think about

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Sometimes arrays are indeed better than vectors  If you are always manipulating a fixed length set of objects  arrays are better  Consider the following code snippets   int main     int v 3   v 0  1  v 1  2 v 2  3  int sum  int starttime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  starttime  lt  lt  endl  for  int i 0 i lt 50000 i    for  int j 0 j lt 10000 j      X x v   sum  x first      int endtime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  endtime  lt  lt  endl  cout  lt  lt  endtime - starttime  lt  lt  endl       where the vector version of X is  class X   vector lt int gt  vec  public  X const vector lt int gt  amp  v   vec   v   int first     return vec 0         and the array version of X is   class X   int f 3    public  X int a     f 0  a 0   f 1  a 1  f 2  a 2    int first     return f 0         The array version will of main   will be faster because we are avoiding the overhead of  new  everytime in the inner loop    This code was posted to comp lang c   by me

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Vectors use a tiny bit more memory than arrays since they contain the size of the array   They also increase the hard disk size of programs and probably the memory footprint of programs   These increases are tiny  but may matter if you re working with an embedded system   Though most places where these differences matter are places where you would use C rather than C

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Using C   arrays with new  that is  using dynamic arrays  should be avoided  There is the problem you have to keep track of the size  and you need to delete them manually and do all sort of housekeeping    Using arrays on the stack is also discouraged because you don t have range checking  and passing the array around will lose any information about its size  array to pointer conversion   You should use boost  array in that case  which wraps a C   array in a small class and provides a size function and iterators to iterate over it   Now the std  vector vs  native C   arrays  taken from the internet       Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing      and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers      Assembly code was generated by gcc 4 1 0 invoked with  g   -O3 -S  on a     x86 64-suse-linux machine    include  lt vector gt   struct S     int padding     std  vector lt int gt  v    int   p    std  vector lt int gt   iterator i      int pointer index  S  amp  s    return s p 3          movq    32  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret  int vector index  S  amp  s    return s v 3          movq    8  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Indexing a vector is the same damn thing as indexing a pointer   int pointer deref  S  amp  s    return  s p         movq    32  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret  int iterator deref  S  amp  s    return  s i         movq    40  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Dereferencing a vector iterator is the same damn thing     as dereferencing a pointer   void pointer increment  S  amp  s      s p         addq     4  32  rdi       ret  void iterator increment  S  amp  s      s i         addq     4  40  rdi       ret     Conclusion  Incrementing a vector iterator is the same damn thing as     incrementing a pointer    Note  If you allocate arrays with new and allocate non-class objects  like plain int  or classes without a user defined constructor and you don t want to have your elements initialized initially  using new-allocated arrays can have performance advantages because std  vector initializes all elements to default values  0 for int  for example  on construction  credits to  bernie for reminding me

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Preamble for micro-optimizer people Remember    quot Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about  or worrying about  the speed of noncritical parts of their programs  and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered  We should forget about small efficiencies  say about 97  of the time  premature optimization is the root of all evil  Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3  quot     Thanks to metamorphosis for the full quote  Don t use a C array instead of a vector  or whatever  just because you believe it s faster as it is supposed to be lower-level  You would be wrong  Use by default vector  or the safe container adapted to your need   and then if your profiler says it is a problem  see if you can optimize it  either by using a better algorithm  or changing container  This said  we can go back to the original question  Static Dynamic Array  The C   array classes are better behaved than the low-level C array because they know a lot about themselves  and can answer questions C arrays can t  They are able to clean after themselves  And more importantly  they are usually written using templates and or inlining  which means that what appears to a lot of code in debug resolves to little or no code produced in release build  meaning no difference with their built-in less safe competition  All in all  it falls on two categories  Dynamic arrays Using a pointer to a malloc-ed new-ed array will be at best as fast as the std  vector version  and a lot less safe  see litb s post   So use a std  vector  Static arrays Using a static array will be at best   as fast as the std  array version and a lot less safe   So use a std  array  Uninitialized memory Sometimes  using a vector instead of a raw buffer incurs a visible cost because the vector will initialize the buffer at construction  while the code it replaces didn t  as remarked bernie by in his answer  If this is the case  then you can handle it by using a unique ptr instead of a vector or  if the case is not exceptional in your codeline  actually write a class buffer owner that will own that memory  and give you easy and safe access to it  including bonuses like resizing it  using realloc    or whatever you need

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There might be some edge case where you have a vector access inside an inline function inside an inline function  where you ve gone beyond what the compiler will inline and it will force a function call   That would be so rare as to not be worth worrying about - in general I would agree with litb   I m surprised nobody has mentioned this yet - don t worry about performance until it has been proven to be a problem  then benchmark

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Preamble for micro-optimizer people Remember    quot Programmers waste enormous amounts of time thinking about  or worrying about  the speed of noncritical parts of their programs  and these attempts at efficiency actually have a strong negative impact when debugging and maintenance are considered  We should forget about small efficiencies  say about 97  of the time  premature optimization is the root of all evil  Yet we should not pass up our opportunities in that critical 3  quot     Thanks to metamorphosis for the full quote  Don t use a C array instead of a vector  or whatever  just because you believe it s faster as it is supposed to be lower-level  You would be wrong  Use by default vector  or the safe container adapted to your need   and then if your profiler says it is a problem  see if you can optimize it  either by using a better algorithm  or changing container  This said  we can go back to the original question  Static Dynamic Array  The C   array classes are better behaved than the low-level C array because they know a lot about themselves  and can answer questions C arrays can t  They are able to clean after themselves  And more importantly  they are usually written using templates and or inlining  which means that what appears to a lot of code in debug resolves to little or no code produced in release build  meaning no difference with their built-in less safe competition  All in all  it falls on two categories  Dynamic arrays Using a pointer to a malloc-ed new-ed array will be at best as fast as the std  vector version  and a lot less safe  see litb s post   So use a std  vector  Static arrays Using a static array will be at best   as fast as the std  array version and a lot less safe   So use a std  array  Uninitialized memory Sometimes  using a vector instead of a raw buffer incurs a visible cost because the vector will initialize the buffer at construction  while the code it replaces didn t  as remarked bernie by in his answer  If this is the case  then you can handle it by using a unique ptr instead of a vector or  if the case is not exceptional in your codeline  actually write a class buffer owner that will own that memory  and give you easy and safe access to it  including bonuses like resizing it  using realloc    or whatever you need

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You have even fewer reasons to use plain arrays in C  11   There are 3 kind of arrays in nature from fastest to slowest  depending on the features they have  of course the quality of implementation can make things really fast even for case 3 in the list     Static with size known at compile time  --- std  array lt T  N gt  Dynamic with size known at runtime and never resized  The typical optimization here is  that if the array can be allocated in the stack directly  -- Not available  Maybe dynarray in C   TS after C  14  In C there are VLAs  Dynamic and resizable at runtime  --- std  vector lt T gt    For 1  plain static arrays with fixed number of elements  use std  array lt T  N gt  in C  11   For 2  fixed size arrays specified at runtime  but that won t change their size  there is discussion in C  14 but it has been moved to a technical specification and made out of C  14 finally   For 3  std  vector lt T gt  will usually ask for memory in the heap  This could have performance consequences  though you could use std  vector lt T  MyAlloc lt T gt  gt  to improve the situation with a custom allocator  The advantage compared to T mytype     new MyType n   is that you can resize it and that it will not decay to a pointer  as plain arrays do   Use the standard library types mentioned to avoid  arrays decaying to pointers  You will save debugging time and the performance is exactly the same as with plain arrays if you use the same set of features

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Sometimes arrays are indeed better than vectors  If you are always manipulating a fixed length set of objects  arrays are better  Consider the following code snippets   int main     int v 3   v 0  1  v 1  2 v 2  3  int sum  int starttime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  starttime  lt  lt  endl  for  int i 0 i lt 50000 i    for  int j 0 j lt 10000 j      X x v   sum  x first      int endtime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  endtime  lt  lt  endl  cout  lt  lt  endtime - starttime  lt  lt  endl       where the vector version of X is  class X   vector lt int gt  vec  public  X const vector lt int gt  amp  v   vec   v   int first     return vec 0         and the array version of X is   class X   int f 3    public  X int a     f 0  a 0   f 1  a 1  f 2  a 2    int first     return f 0         The array version will of main   will be faster because we are avoiding the overhead of  new  everytime in the inner loop    This code was posted to comp lang c   by me

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If you compile the software in debug mode  many compilers will not inline the accessor functions of the vector   This will make the stl vector implementation much slower in circumstances where performance is an issue   It will also make the code easier to debug since you can see in the debugger how much memory was allocated   In optimized mode  I would expect the stl vector to approach the efficiency of an array   This is since many of the vector methods are now inlined

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If you compile the software in debug mode  many compilers will not inline the accessor functions of the vector   This will make the stl vector implementation much slower in circumstances where performance is an issue   It will also make the code easier to debug since you can see in the debugger how much memory was allocated   In optimized mode  I would expect the stl vector to approach the efficiency of an array   This is since many of the vector methods are now inlined

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To respond to something Mehrdad said      However  there might be cases where   you still need arrays  When   interfacing with low level code  i e    assembly  or old libraries that   require arrays  you might not be able   to use vectors    Not true at all  Vectors degrade nicely into arrays pointers if you use   vector lt double gt  vector  vector push back 42    double  array    amp   vector begin         pass the array to whatever low-level code you have   This works for all major STL implementations  In the next standard  it will be required to work  even though it does just fine today

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Using C   arrays with new  that is  using dynamic arrays  should be avoided  There is the problem you have to keep track of the size  and you need to delete them manually and do all sort of housekeeping    Using arrays on the stack is also discouraged because you don t have range checking  and passing the array around will lose any information about its size  array to pointer conversion   You should use boost  array in that case  which wraps a C   array in a small class and provides a size function and iterators to iterate over it   Now the std  vector vs  native C   arrays  taken from the internet       Comparison of assembly code generated for basic indexing  dereferencing      and increment operations on vectors and arrays pointers      Assembly code was generated by gcc 4 1 0 invoked with  g   -O3 -S  on a     x86 64-suse-linux machine    include  lt vector gt   struct S     int padding     std  vector lt int gt  v    int   p    std  vector lt int gt   iterator i      int pointer index  S  amp  s    return s p 3          movq    32  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret  int vector index  S  amp  s    return s v 3          movq    8  rdi    rax      movl    12  rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Indexing a vector is the same damn thing as indexing a pointer   int pointer deref  S  amp  s    return  s p         movq    32  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret  int iterator deref  S  amp  s    return  s i         movq    40  rdi    rax      movl      rax    eax      ret     Conclusion  Dereferencing a vector iterator is the same damn thing     as dereferencing a pointer   void pointer increment  S  amp  s      s p         addq     4  32  rdi       ret  void iterator increment  S  amp  s      s i         addq     4  40  rdi       ret     Conclusion  Incrementing a vector iterator is the same damn thing as     incrementing a pointer    Note  If you allocate arrays with new and allocate non-class objects  like plain int  or classes without a user defined constructor and you don t want to have your elements initialized initially  using new-allocated arrays can have performance advantages because std  vector initializes all elements to default values  0 for int  for example  on construction  credits to  bernie for reminding me

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I d argue that the primary concern isn t performance  but safety  You can make a lot of mistakes with arrays  consider resizing  for example   where a vector would save you a lot of pain

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To respond to something Mehrdad said      However  there might be cases where   you still need arrays  When   interfacing with low level code  i e    assembly  or old libraries that   require arrays  you might not be able   to use vectors    Not true at all  Vectors degrade nicely into arrays pointers if you use   vector lt double gt  vector  vector push back 42    double  array    amp   vector begin         pass the array to whatever low-level code you have   This works for all major STL implementations  In the next standard  it will be required to work  even though it does just fine today

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Vectors are arrays under the hood   The performance is the same   One place where you can run into a performance issue  is not sizing the vector correctly to begin with   As a vector fills  it will resize itself  and that can imply  a new array allocation  followed by n copy constructors  followed by about n destructor calls  followed by an array delete   If your construct destruct is expensive  you are much better off making the vector the correct size to begin with   There is a simple way to demonstrate this   Create a simple class that shows when it is constructed destroyed copied assigned   Create a vector of these things  and start pushing them on the back end of the vector   When the vector fills  there will be a cascade of activity as the vector resizes    Then try it again with the vector sized to the expected number of elements    You will see the difference

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If you re using vectors to represent multi-dimensional behavior  there is a performance hit   Do 2d  vectors cause a performance hit   The gist is that there s a small amount of overhead with each sub-vector having size information  and there will not necessarily be serialization of data  as there is with multi-dimensional c arrays    This lack of serialization can offer greater than micro optimization opportunities   If you re doing multi-dimensional arrays  it may be best to just extend std  vector and roll your own get set resize bits function

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Sometimes arrays are indeed better than vectors  If you are always manipulating a fixed length set of objects  arrays are better  Consider the following code snippets   int main     int v 3   v 0  1  v 1  2 v 2  3  int sum  int starttime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  starttime  lt  lt  endl  for  int i 0 i lt 50000 i    for  int j 0 j lt 10000 j      X x v   sum  x first      int endtime time NULL   cout  lt  lt  endtime  lt  lt  endl  cout  lt  lt  endtime - starttime  lt  lt  endl       where the vector version of X is  class X   vector lt int gt  vec  public  X const vector lt int gt  amp  v   vec   v   int first     return vec 0         and the array version of X is   class X   int f 3    public  X int a     f 0  a 0   f 1  a 1  f 2  a 2    int first     return f 0         The array version will of main   will be faster because we are avoiding the overhead of  new  everytime in the inner loop    This code was posted to comp lang c   by me

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There is definitely a performance impact to using an std  vector vs a raw array when you want an uninitialized buffer  e g  to use as destination for memcpy     An std  vector will initialize all its elements using the default constructor  A raw array will not  The c   spec for the std vector constructor taking a count argument  it s the third form  states    Constructs a new container from a variety of data sources  optionally using a user supplied allocator alloc     Constructs the container with count default-inserted instances of T  No copies are made     Complexity   2-3  Linear in count  A raw array does not incur this initialization cost  Note that with a custom allocator  it is possible to avoid  quot initialization quot  of the vector s elements  i e  to use default initialization instead of value initialization   See these questions for more details   Is this behavior of vector  resize size type n  under C  11 and Boost Container correct  How can I avoid std  vector lt  gt  to initialize all its elements

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Go with STL  There s no performance penalty   The algorithms are very efficient and they do a good job of handling the kinds of details that most of us would not think about

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If you do not need to dynamically adjust the size  you have the memory overhead of saving the capacity  one pointer size t   That s it

[c++] Using arrays or std::vectors in C++, what's the performance gap?

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