How do I clear the std::queue efficiently?

Question

A common idiom for clearing standard containers is swapping with an empty version of the container:

void clear( std::queue<int> &q )
{
   std::queue<int> empty;
   std::swap( q, empty );
}

It is also the only way of actually clearing the memory held inside some containers (std::vector)

Yes - a bit of a misfeature of the queue class, IMHO. This is what I do:

#include <queue>
using namespace std;;

int main() {
    queue <int> q1;
    // stuff
    q1 = queue<int>();  
}

Author of the topic asked how to clear the queue "efficiently", so I assume he wants better complexity than linear O(queue size). Methods served by David Rodriguez, anon have the same complexity: according to STL reference, operator = has complexity O(queue size). IMHO it's because each element of queue is reserved separately and it isn't allocated in one big memory block, like in vector. So to clear all memory, we have to delete every element separately. So the straightest way to clear std::queue is one line:

while(!Q.empty()) Q.pop();

Apparently, there are two most obvious ways to clear std::queue: swapping with empty object and assignment to empty object.

I would suggest using assignment because it simply faster, more readable, and unambiguous.

I measured performance using following simple code and I found that swapping in C++03 version works 70-80% slower than assignment to an empty object. In C++11 there is no difference in performance, however. Anyway, I would go with assignment.

#include <algorithm>
#include <ctime>
#include <iostream>
#include <queue>
#include <vector>

int main()
{
    std::cout << "Started" << std::endl;

    std::queue<int> q;

    for (int i = 0; i < 10000; ++i)
    {
        q.push(i);
    }

    std::vector<std::queue<int> > queues(10000, q);

    const std::clock_t begin = std::clock();

    for (std::vector<int>::size_type i = 0; i < queues.size(); ++i)
    {
        // OK in all versions
        queues[i] = std::queue<int>();

        // OK since C++11
        // std::queue<int>().swap(queues[i]);

        // OK before C++11 but slow
        // std::queue<int> empty;
        // std::swap(empty, queues[i]);
    }

    const double elapsed = double(clock() - begin) / CLOCKS_PER_SEC;

    std::cout << elapsed << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

In C++11 you can clear the queue by doing this:

std::queue<int> queue;
// ...
queue = {};

You could create a class that inherits from queue and clear the underlying container directly. This is very efficient.

template<class T>
class queue_clearable : public std::queue<T>
{
public:
    void clear()
    {
        c.clear();
    }
};

Maybe your a implementation also allows your Queue object (here JobQueue) to inherit std::queue<Job> instead of having the queue as a member variable. This way you would have direct access to c.clear() in your member functions.

Assuming your m_Queue contains integers:

std::queue<int>().swap(m_Queue)

Otherwise, if it contains e.g. pointers to Job objects, then:

std::queue<Job*>().swap(m_Queue)

This way you swap an empty queue with your m_Queue, thus m_Queue becomes empty.