[to3m]

You might also do this to improve debuggability and unoptimised build performance. The VC++ stdlib is particularly bad, as its authors have gone down the ultra-DRY rabbit hole even for simple stuff - a pain to step through, and it relies entirely on the optimizer doing its thing.

(libstdc++'s vector looks sensible in this respect - a good decision on their part. Haven't looked at any other aspects of it though.)

At one point the contents of vectors were often inconvenient to examine in just about every debugger, because you'd have to type out some infeasibly long expression to get at them, "vec._Mybase._Myval._Myptr[0]", that kind of thing, which you could also fix by writing your own container and simply calling your pointer field something like "p". (Same goes for smart pointers.) Luckily this is much improved in the latest Visual Studio but it may still be an issue elsewhere.