memory used: std::list v.s. std::forward_list

Question

Because list have one more pointer(previous pointer) than forward_list, so if they both hold the same number of element, i.e. 1<<30, list will use almost 1/3 more memory. Right?

Then if I repeat calling resize larger and larger, forward_list must be able to resize much larger than list.

Test code:

#include<forward_list>
#include<list>
#include<iostream>
int main(){
    using namespace std;
    typedef list<char> list_t;
    //typedef forward_list<char> list_t;
    list_t l;
    list_t::size_type i = 0;
    try{
        while(1){
            l.resize(i += (1<<20));
            cerr<<i<<" ";
        }
    }
    catch(...){
        cerr<<endl;
    }
    return 0;
}

To my surprise, when the process is killed, they have almost the same size ... Anybody could interpret it?

Answer 1

You should find that with better memory sniffing that your initial hypothesis that a std::list<T> will consume three times as much energy is correct. On my Windows machine, I whipped up a quick memory usage program using GetProcessMemoryInfo

Here is the core of my program:

int main()
{
    size_t initMemory = MemoryUsage();
    std::list<unsigned char> linkedList;

    for (int i = 0; i < ITERATIONS; i++)
        linkedList.push_back(i % 256);
    size_t linkedListMemoryUsage = MemoryUsage() - initMemory;

    std::forward_list<unsigned char> forwardList;
    for (int i = 0; i < ITERATIONS; i++)
        forwardList.push_front(i % 256);
    size_t forwardListMemoryUsage = MemoryUsage() - linkedListMemoryUsage - initMemory;

    std::cout << "Bytes used by Linked List: " << linkedListMemoryUsage << std::endl;
    std::cout << "Bytes used by Forward List: " << forwardListMemoryUsage << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

Results when running it under release build:

#define ITERATIONS 128
Bytes used by Linked List: 24576
Bytes used by Forward List: 8192
8192 * 3 = 24576

Here's a quote from cplusplus.com that even says that there should be noticeable memory difference between the two containers.

The main design difference between a forward_list container and a list container is that the first keeps internally only a link to the next element, while the latter keeps two links per element: one pointing to the next element and one to the preceding one, allowing efficient iteration in both directions, but consuming additional storage per element and with a slight higher time overhead inserting and removing elements. forward_list objects are thus more efficient than list objects, although they can only be iterated forwards.

Using the resize function on the lists, as you do in the posted code, the memory difference was even more pronounced with std::list<T> consuming four times as much memory.

Answer 2

I know the question is 4 years old, but the accepted answer makes no sense (as Justin Raymond pointed out).

Nick Babcock's approach is imprecise, as the number of elements is too low; there is always some overhead on the heap, that you will measure as well.

To show this, I used a bigger data type and more elements (4096): On g++ 6.2.1 and linux x64 sizeof(void*) = 8 and sizeof (bigDataType_t) = 800 (bigData_t is long[100]).

So what do we expect? Each type of list has to store the actual data on the heap; std::list stores 2 pointers per link (backward and forward), std::forward_list just one (forward).

Expected memory for std::list: 4096 x 800 + 2 x 8 x 4096 = 3,342,336 bytes

Actual memory for std::list: 3,415,040 bytes

Expected memory for std::forward_list: 4096 x 800 + 1 x 8 x 4096 = 3,309,568 bytes

Actual memory for std::forward_list: 3,382,272 bytes

I used Massif to get the heap usage of the programs.

As we can see, the numbers fit quite well. When using big data types, the memory for the extra pointer doesn't make much difference!

When using char as datatype (as OP), the expected and actual memory footprint don't fit too well, most likely because of some overhead. However, there is no factor 3 for memory consumption.

std::list: Expected 69,632 bytes, actual: 171,008 bytes

std::forward_list: Expected 36,864 bytes, actual: 138,240 bytes

My code:

#include <list>
#include <forward_list>

struct bigData_t {
    long foo[100];
};
typedef bigData_t myType_t;
// typedef char myType_t;

int main()
{
#ifdef USE_FORWARD_LIST
    std::forward_list<myType_t> linkedList;
#else
    std::list<myType_t> linkedList;
#endif
    for (int i = 0; i < 4096; i++) {
        myType_t bigData;
        linkedList.push_front(bigData);
    }
    return 0;
}