Container to present multiple memory chunks as single continuous one

Question

Is there some "standard" container (STL, boost) which can present multiple memory chunks as single continuous one? I need to work with some data with following conditions:

• Total size of data is not known in advance (web response)
• Memory is allocated in chunks (with some external allocation function, which I have no control of)
• Memory freeing is not controlled by me, so reallocations are relatively expensive

So, after getting all the data, I have a list of memory chunks. And I need to apply some STL algorithms (search, copy, etc.) to data as a whole. There is a solution to write container to hold info about these chunks + forward iterator which is able to "jump" from one chunk to another.

But problem seems rather general, so I hope that there is some well-known answer which I'm missing. Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

The memory is provided to you, you say. That sounds like you don't want to copy it. No problem, the STL philosophy is quite flexible. You don't actually need a container; they're just there for memory management and that's already taken care of.

What you do need is an iterator. There's no standard one; you'll have to write one yourself. There are just too many slight variations to provide a standard solution for this. But don't worry, it's fairly easy. You get the necessary typedefs if you inherit from std::iterator<value_type>, so you need to only write operator* (straightforward) and operator++/operator--/operator+/operator- (which understand the chunks).