Why STL containers are preferred over MFC containers?

Question

Previously, I used to use MFC collection classes such CArray and CMap. After a while I switched to STL containers and have been using them for a while.

Answer 1

MFC containers derive from CObject and CObject has the assignment operator made private. I have found this very annoying in practice.

std::vector, unlinke CArray, guarantees that the memory block is contiguous, thus you can interop with C programming interfaces easily:

std::vector buffer; 
char* c_buffer = &*buffer.begin();