I think you are wrong about all three objections to vector.
1. Vectors should save you memory over lists.
2. Large vectors causing memory allocation failure due to fragmentation isn't generally a problem in 64 bit platforms and the right way to deal with the problem in 32 bit systems is to not fragment your memory in the first place. You should not sacrifice performance of a library to accommodate poorly written applications on some platforms at the expense of all other applications and all other platforms.
3. Vectors are faster than lists for almost all use cases.
I also agree with Andrew that you can parameterize for container type. In the stl, heap operations there is a very clear abstraction between data structures and algorithms. I would think that providing that abstraction should be a goal of the project.
Well said. The only thing I would add to this is that a linked list will not suffice for a binary heap implementation, if that's what's being proposed, but binary tree will. The difference is in these highlighted nicely in the difference between std::set/map and the upcoming Boost.Container flat_set/flat_map [1], which I just discovered :) Andrew Sutton andrew.n.sutton@gmail.com [1] http://svn.boost.org/svn/boost/sandbox/move/libs/container/doc/html/index.ht...