Originally Posted by ChaosEngine
agree with everything else you said, but why would that defeat the purpose of the stl? The standard library defines interfaces and operational complexity, if you match those guarentees you can implement the containers in anyway you see fit. This is a good thing as it allows compiler/library writers to optimise their implementations for their platform, but maintain a common interface. :cool:
For example, if on some weird quantum computing platform, an std::list is more efficently implemented as a BST :eek: , they can do that. It's not likely, but it's allowed.