What's a good way of *temporarily* sorting a vector?

Question

I've got a std::vector which I need to sort by selected algorithms for certain operations, but to maintain its original state (e.g. items ordered by when they were entered) the rest of the time.

Obviously I can use std::copy to create a temporary vector and sort that, but I'm wondering if there's a better way, possibly by timestamping the items entered.

Cheers

Answer 1

You could create a std::vector that holds all the indexes of the first vector. You could then sort the index-vector as you like. This should be fast and most importantly, doesn't mean you have to copy the first vector (which is probably more costly!).