Thanks! I've updated the implementation to use this. I'm still missing a proper implementation for optimized, different type swap, and a stronger exception safety guarantee for assignment. The latest version is available at the same place: http://tinyurl.com/9wv28 Tested and worked on VC6, VC7.1 and BC6 Pablo
I don't remember exactly the case but the problem was to store a member buffer properly aligned, so that it could be used instead of the dynamic allocation. I don't know if this can be enough for you but in my Shmem library I use boost::detail::max_align alignment to detect the most restrictive alignment of the platform so that I align memory returned from allocators to that boundary.
alignment_of_max_align = ::boost::alignment_of<::boost::detail::max_align>::value
Normally, the result is a 8 byte alignment. You could use an array of max_align structs as the buffer and overwrite it, since in practice the alignment is 8 bytes and max_align is usually 8 bytes so:
template <...> class any {
//Use a max_align arry as buffer boost::detail::max_align[max_bytes/sizeof(boost::detail::max_align]buf; };
8 byte alignment align it anyways acceptable and although you round the buffer size to 8 bytes and waste 7 bytes for a single char, a call to "new" is going to waste at least 8 bytes in bookeeping and another 8 rounding it to the most restrictive alignment, becouse although new knows the type, is usually implemented on top of malloc.
The member buffer will speed up allocations A LOT, because apart from avoiding the dynamic allocation to a stack pointer increment, it will avoid the mutex locking new usually has in multithreaded enviroments.
Hope this works,
Ion