What is the purpose and usage of `memory_resource`?

Question

The standard C++17 include a new namespace pmr including a set of classes grouped under the name of memory_resource.

After a search on internet, I found very few vulgarized information about it, the direct consequence is this question:

What are the main ideas behind pmr and especially pmr::memory_resource?

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Detailing a bit more the question, some of the question marks in my head are:

• What does it bring new, or what were the limitations it solve?
• What is the difference with allocator?
• Does polymorphic mean it is possible to select runtime the allocator provided to a container constructor? (e.g. for testing purpose)
• Does it helps for implementing memory pool, or other memory management schemes?

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Context:

In the intend of creating a memory pool allocator, I found information about this namespace. Reading names like pool_options or polymorphic_allocator raised my attention.

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Related questions:

polymorphic_allocator: when and why should I use it?

Answer 1

A polymorphic_allocator is intended to let you have an allocator whose behavior is dynamically determined at runtime.

The only way to create a polymorphic_allocator is:

1. Default constructed, in which case it uses std::pmr::get_default_resource() return value, which is a memory_resource*.

2. Pass it a memory_resource*.

3. copy from another polymorphic_allocator.

So the point of customization for a polymorphic_allocator is creating a class that inherits from memory_resource and implementing its methods, or using one of the pre-declared memory_resources that are defined in std::pmr: (un)synchronized_pool_resource and monotonic_buffer_resource as types, or std::pmr::new_delete_resource() / std::pmr::null_memory_resource().

Suppose you want a your memory to be allocated using a strategy different than the 5 provided in std::pmr. Then you make a class that inherits from std::pmr::memory_resource, and pass it to a container which uses a polymorphic_allocator.