could you please provide some additional rationale for this container? I don't understand the advantage to allocating values without any type of container and using the pointers as keys. as I understand the tokenmap-container / my assumptions: - insert()ing into the container requires an allocation - the key values are unknown to the user of the container - the key type must (internally) be integral so what is the advantage to simply allocating the mapped_type and using the returned pointer as the key? in container-form: class container{ typedef ... mapped_type; typedef mapped_type *key_type; ... key_type insert(mapped_type &v){ return new mapped_type(v); } } (to make the container iteratable(if that`s a word) a linked list would have to be used, but a tokenmap also seems to do that) what am I missing?