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Leigh Johnston <> wrote:
> http://i42.co.uk/stuff/tree.htm

Btw, an optimization commonly used in STL implementations with regards
to the assign() function of most data containers (especially those that
allocate individual elements) is to reuse existing elements while
assigning, rather than first clearing the entire data container and
then inserting the elements.

In other words, when assigning (with the assign() member function),
the input values are assigned to any existing elements of the container.
If the container had less elements than what is being assigned, the rest
are then inserted to the end normally, and it had more, the extra is
removed normally.

This has the obvious advantage that the amount of allocations and
deallocations is minimized, making the assignment faster (and reducing
memory fragmentation).