Best way to return list of objects in C++?

Question

It's been a while since I programmed in C++, and after coming from python, I feel soooo in a straight jacket, ok I'm not gonna rant.

I have a couple of functions that act as "pipes", accepting a list as input, returning another list as output (based on the input),

this is in concept, but in practice, I'm using std::vector to represent the list, is that acceptable?

further more, I'm not using any pointers, so I'm using std::vector<SomeType> the_list(some_size); as the variable, and returning it directly, i.e. return the_list;

P.S. So far it's all ok, the project size is small and this doesn't seem to affect performance, but I still want to get some input/advice on this, because I feel like I'm writing python in C++.

Answer 1

The only thing I can see is that your forcing a copy of the list you return. It would be more efficient to do something like:

  void DoSomething(const std::vector<SomeType>& in, std::vector<SomeType>& out)   {   ...   // no need to return anything, just modify out   } 

Because you pass in the list you want to return, you avoid the extra copy.

Edit: This is an old reply. If you can use a modern C++ compiler with move semantics, you don't need to worry about this. Of course, this answer still applies if the object you are returning DOES NOT have move semantics.