Thread: When c++ returns, is it the same as a copy?

Originally Posted by whiteflags

Well look at it this way: if they don't conform to theorectical performance requirements, your STL implementation is not standards compliant.

Indeed. But we have a lot of those, don't we?
Non-standard compliant compilers. Incomplete library implementations.
And some libraries may still be a factor or two faster than others since constants are ignored in big-oh, which I believe the standard states their requirements in.

If you are capable of making such an evaluation, precisely nothing prevents you from retesting, to get your personal results.

I am way too lazy to make such a thing.
I am merely criticizing the results. If I really wanted to have good results, then I suppose I would have to test it, since I can't just demand someone else do it.

If someone's good implementation comes up with wildly different results, you have a point, but I just don't see why that would be. Particularly with the items being tested... why would memory management, which is only different in architecture, be a significant factor in results among STL implementations?

And why would they not be? There is a lot of complexity there.
Allocating, moving, keeping track of elements, cleaning up, etc.
And then there's the big mess of allocation and deallocation which means allocators and new/delete which needs to be properly implemented.
I'm a pessimist. I can see a lot of things go wrong.