Selecting the right standard containers

The standard library contains a variety of containers for meeting multiple and various needs. There are sequence containers (in which elements are arranged in a certain position), container adapters (that provide a different interface for sequential containers), associative containers (in which the order is given by a key associated with an element), unordered associative containers (in which the elements do not follow a certain order). Selecting the right container for a given task is not always straight forward. This recipe will provide guidelines to help you decide which one to use for what purpose.

How to do it…

To decide which standard container you should use, consider the following guidelines:

• Use std::vector as the default container, when no other specific requirements exist.
• Use std::array when the length of a sequence is fixed and known at compile time.
• Use std::deque if you frequently need to...