Hello! I've got a relatively simple queue-like container which can be efficiently used as a buffer. It allocates memory in chunks, and reuses these chunks without deallocating them. (Unused chunks are deallocated based on a simple heuristic.) It's generic (with element type and allocator as parameters), but is expected to be often instantiated with 'unsigned char' (byte) element type. The interface and implementation are not currently iterator-friendly, because I did not need iterator behaviour. As the buffer is expected to be used for storing multiple elements at a time from a continuous storage (C array), it does reads and writes more efficiently than by-element copying iterators can provide. But there is no problem adding iterators, if there will be any interest in this container. Here is the interface (which is short and hopefully more undestandable than my description): /* (constructor) * Specifies buffer memory management details. Storage is allocated in chunks * of [chunk_size] elements; this defaults to the count which makes each chunk * about 10Kb in size (a wild guess). Adjust [reuse_amount] to specify how * fast should the buffer deallocate unused chunks, in 1/128's of full buffer * fill-and-read cycle. A value of 128 (the default) corresponds to the time * all old elements in the buffer are read. A value of 256 means that * unneeded chunks are deallocated after filling and emptying the buffer * twice. */ buffer (size_t chunk_size = default_chunk_size, unsigned reuse_amount = default_reuse_amount); /* * Add the given elements to the end of buffer. */ void write (const El *data, size_t count); /* * Read the given number of elements data from the start of buffer, and remove * the read elements. If less then [count] elements are available, will * read (and remove) all the available elements. Returns the number of * elements read (and removed). */ size_t read (El *data, size_t count); /* * Read the given number of elements starting with the given position, * WITHOUT removing them from the buffer. Position starts at zero, so * specifying zero [pos] results in the behaviour similar to read(), but * without removing the elements. */ size_t read_at (size_t pos, El *data, size_t count); size_t size () const; bool empty () const; -- Andrey.