Should a user-defined container that is a wrapper for std::vector, inherit or contain std::vector?

Question

Should a user-defined container that is a wrapper for std::vector, inherit or contain std::vector?

I have a class that is supposed to be a container. I see two options:

1) inherit from vector 2) have a private member vector and override all the vector functions to make my container act as vector

I am not sure if it is only a question of style, or one way is fundamentally better than the other?

The extra functionality I want to add is small, few data members and functions here and there. Mostly it will be convenient functions to work with the data in the vector.

Answer 1

First of all, STL containers are not supposed to be inherited. They even don't have virtual destructors.

Second, it's always preferable to choose composition/aggregation in favor of inheritance, as this is a lower coupling technique that puts less restrictions/requirements on the code.

See this answer for more details, this question has been raised a lot of times.