std::vector<bool>

cppreference std::vector<bool>

std::vector<bool> is not a container

在阅读boost iterator的Standard Proposal For New-Style Iterators (PDF)时，其中有关于std::vector<bool> 的这样的描述：

For example, vector<bool>::iterator is almost a random access iterator, but the return type is not bool& (see issue 96 and Herb Sutter's paper J16/99-0008 = WG21 N1185). Therefore, the iterators of vector<bool> only meet the requirements of input iterator and output iterator.

在下面文章中对此进行了解释：

stackoverflow Why is vector not a STL container?

For space-optimization reasons, the C++ standard (as far back as C++98) explicitly calls out vector<bool> as a special standard container where each bool uses only one bit of space rather than one byte as a normal bool would (implementing a kind of "dynamic bitset"). In exchange for this optimization it doesn't offer all the capabilities and interface of a normal standard container.

In this case, since you can't take the address of a bit within a byte, things such as operator[] can't return a bool& but instead return a proxy object that allows to manipulate the particular bit in question. Since this proxy object is not a bool&, you can't assign its address to a bool* like you could with the result of such an operator call on a "normal" container. In turn this means that bool *pb =&v[0]; isn't valid code.

On the other hand deque doesn't have any such specialization called out so each bool takes a byte and you can take the address of the value return from operator[].

Finally note that the MS standard library implementation is (arguably) suboptimal in that it uses a small chunk size for deques, which means that using deque as a substitute isn't always the right answer.

When Is a Container Not a Container?

On vector<bool> -- Howard Hinnant