std::vector resize downward

Question

Calling resize() with a smaller size has no effect on the capacity of a vector. It will not free memory.

The standard idiom for freeing memory from a vector is to swap() it with an empty temporary vector: std::vector<T>().swap(vec);. If you want to resize downwards you'd need to copy from your original vector into a new local temporary vector and then swap the resulting vector with your original.

Updated: C++11 added a member function shrink_to_fit() for this purpose, it's a non-binding request to reduce capacity() to size().

Actually, the standard does specify what should happen:

This is from vector, but the theme is the same for all the containers (list, deque, etc...)

23.2.4.2 vector capacity [lib.vector.capacity]

void resize(size_type sz, T c = T());

6) Effects:

if (sz > size())
    insert(end(), sz-size(), c);
else if (sz < size())
    erase(begin()+sz, end());
else
    ; //do nothing

That is to say: If the size specified to resize is less than the number of elements, those elements will be erased from the container. Regarding capacity(), this depends on what erase() does to it.

I cannot locate it in the standard, but I'm pretty sure clear() is defined to be:

void clear()
{
    erase(begin(), end());
}

Therefore, the effects clear() has on capacity() is also tied to the effects erase() has on it. According to the standard:

23.2.4.3 vector modifiers [lib.vector.modifiers]

iterator erase(iterator position);
iterator erase(iterator first, iterator last);

4) Complexity: The destructor of T is called the number of times equal to the number of the elements erased....

This means that the elements will be destructed, but the memory will remain intact. erase() has no effect on capacity, therefore resize() and clear() also have no effect.

The capacity will never decrease. I'm not sure if the standard states this explicitly, but it is implied: iterators and references to vector's elements must not be invalidated by resize(n) if n < capacity().