Best way to return list of objects in C++?

Question

It\'s been a while since I programmed in C++, and after coming from python, I feel soooo in a straight jacket, ok I\'m not gonna rant.

I have a couple of functions that

Answer 1

The only thing I can see is that your forcing a copy of the list you return. It would be more efficient to do something like:

  void DoSomething(const std::vector& in, std::vector& out)
  {
  ...
  // no need to return anything, just modify out
  }

Because you pass in the list you want to return, you avoid the extra copy.

Edit: This is an old reply. If you can use a modern C++ compiler with move semantics, you don't need to worry about this. Of course, this answer still applies if the object you are returning DOES NOT have move semantics.