CODEWITHSUNDEEP
stringsortingvectorstlset
Noah Roth
Noah Roth

Reputation: 9220

String sorting - std::set or std::vector?

I'm going to have around 1000 strings that need to be sorted alphabetically.

std::set, from what I've read, is sorted. std::vector is not. std::set seems to be a simpler solution, but if I were to use a std::vector, all I would need to do is use is std::sort to alphabetize the strings.

My application may or may not be performance critical, so performance isn't necessarily the issue here (yet), but since I'll need to iterate through the container to write the strings to the file, I've read that iterating through a std::set is a tad bit slower than iterating through a std::vector.

I know it probably won't matter, but I'd like to hear which one you all would go with in this situation.

Which stl container would best suit my needs? Thanks.

Upvotes: 1

Views: 736

Answers (1)

moodboom
moodboom

Reputation: 6882

std::vector with a one-time call to std::sort seems like the simplest way to do what you are after, computationally speaking. std::set provides dynamic lookups by key, which you don't really need here, and things will get more complicated if you have to deal with duplicates.

Make sure you use reserve to pre-allocate the memory for the vector, since you know the size ahead of time in this case. This prevents memory reallocation as you add to the vector (very expensive).

Also, if you use [] notation instead of push_back() you may save a little time avoiding bounds checking of push_back(), but that is really academic and insubstantial and perhaps not even true with compiler optimizations. :-)

Upvotes: 2

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