C++ vector that *doesn’t* initialize its members?

For default and value initialization of structs with user-provided default constructors which don’t explicitly initialize anything, no initialization is performed on unsigned char members:

struct uninitialized_char {
    unsigned char m;
    uninitialized_char() {}
};

// just to be safe
static_assert(1 == sizeof(uninitialized_char), "");

std::vector<uninitialized_char> v(4 * (1<<20));

GetMyDataFromC(reinterpret_cast<unsigned char*>(&v[0]), v.size());

I think this is even legal under the strict aliasing rules.

When I compared the construction time for v vs. a vector<unsigned char> I got ~8 µs vs ~12 ms. More than 1000x faster. Compiler was clang 3.2 with libc++ and flags: -std=c++11 -Os -fcatch-undefined-behavior -ftrapv -pedantic -Weverything -Wno-c++98-compat -Wno-c++98-compat-pedantic -Wno-missing-prototypes

C++11 has a helper for uninitialized storage, std::aligned_storage. Though it requires a compile time size.

Here’s an added example, to compare total usage (times in nanoseconds):

VERSION=1 (vector<unsigned char>):

clang++ -std=c++14 -stdlib=libc++ main.cpp -DVERSION=1 -ftrapv -Weverything -Wno-c++98-compat -Wno-sign-conversion -Wno-sign-compare -Os && ./a.out

initialization+first use: 16,425,554
array initialization: 12,228,039
first use: 4,197,515
second use: 4,404,043

VERSION=2 (vector<uninitialized_char>):

clang++ -std=c++14 -stdlib=libc++ main.cpp -DVERSION=2 -ftrapv -Weverything -Wno-c++98-compat -Wno-sign-conversion -Wno-sign-compare -Os && ./a.out

initialization+first use: 7,523,216
array initialization: 12,782
first use: 7,510,434
second use: 4,155,241

#include <iostream>
#include <chrono>
#include <vector>

struct uninitialized_char {
  unsigned char c;
  uninitialized_char() {}
};

void foo(unsigned char *c, int size) {
  for (int i = 0; i < size; ++i) {
    c[i] = '\0';
  }
}

int main() {
  auto start = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();

#if VERSION==1
  using element_type = unsigned char;
#elif VERSION==2
  using element_type = uninitialized_char;
#endif

  std::vector<element_type> v(4 * (1<<20));

  auto end = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();

  foo(reinterpret_cast<unsigned char*>(v.data()), v.size());

  auto end2 = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();

  foo(reinterpret_cast<unsigned char*>(v.data()), v.size());

  auto end3 = std::chrono::steady_clock::now();

  std::cout.imbue(std::locale(""));
  std::cout << "initialization+first use: " << std::chrono::nanoseconds(end2-start).count() << '\n';
  std::cout << "array initialization: " << std::chrono::nanoseconds(end-start).count() << '\n';
  std::cout << "first use: " << std::chrono::nanoseconds(end2-end).count() << '\n';
  std::cout << "second use: " << std::chrono::nanoseconds(end3-end2).count() << '\n';
}

I’m using clang svn-3.6.0 r218006