When implementing an elementary data structure like stack, queues, linked list et al. should I create a resource pool(of nodes) by dynamically allocating memory in bunch or should I allocate memory separately every time I need a node?
A:
This entirely depends on your goals. By default (i.e. unless you really need to do otherwise), just do a normal allocation for each next node.
Memory pools as compared to just allocating nodes:
Make allocation faster. Depending on underlying allocation mechanism, sometimes significantly faster.
Usually less memory fragmentation, though this may not be a problem with some allocators.
Major drawback: waste memory on reserved, but not used nodes. This is very important if you use data structure indiscriminately (e.g. 1000s of instances) as opposed to just having a couple of instances.
Because of the drawback, memory pools are not suitable for generic situations.
In C++ all standard containers have an allocator template parameter.
doublep
2010-07-17 13:21:17