[boost] What is the status of associative vector framework?

From: ION_G_M (ION_G_M_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-01-27 04:51:51

Hello to all,

  While developing Boost Shmem, I needed an associative container to 
store data in shared memory, and the easiest one to develop was an 
ordered vector. For this, I'm using a slightly modified version of 
Loki's AssocVector (just added reserve() and capacity() members to 
adjust memory and boost performance in some cases).

  Reading Boost Files section, I've seen an associative_vector 
directory containing a preliminary version of this class and related 
mails, but I don't see any more references to this class since 2002. In 
the Formal Review Schedule page it is not listed but I can see some 
review mails googling around so I was asking if this library was 
abandoned for any reason.

  I think that this king of "flat" associative containers are very 
useful, since they are normally faster than std::set/map in lookups and 
more memory friendly, specially for small types, since normally a tree 
like structure imposes an overhead of 3 pointers and an integer per 
node. That without counting that memory allocation for a vector has far 
less fragmentation when using std::allocator.

  Is the library still alive? Is anyone insterested in these classes? 
What I propose is a std::set/map/multiset/multimap like interface on an 
ordered vector, without more advanced functions, perhaps with added 
reserve/capacity interface to optimize memory allocation when the 
number of elements is known beforehand.

Best regards,

/Ion

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