I have got here two programs with me, both are doing exactly the same task. They are just setting an boolean array / vector to the value true. The program using vector takes 27 seconds to run whereas the program involving array with 5 times greater size takes less than 1 s. I would like to know the exact reason as to why there is such a major difference ? Are vectors really that inefficient ?

Program using vectors

#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

int main(){
 const int size = 2000;
 time_t start, end;
 time(&start);
 vector<bool> v(size);
 for(int i = 0; i < size; i++){
  for(int j = 0; j < size; j++){
   v[i] = true;
  }
 }
 time(&end);
 cout<<difftime(end, start)<<" seconds."<<endl;
}

Runtime - 27 seconds

Program using Array

#include <iostream>
#include <ctime>

using namespace std;

int main(){
 const int size = 10000; // 5 times more size
 time_t start, end;
 time(&start);
 bool v[size];
 for(int i = 0; i < size; i++){
  for(int j = 0; j < size; j++){
   v[i] = true;
  }
 }
 time(&end);
 cout<<difftime(end, start)<<" seconds."<<endl;
}

Runtime - < 1 seconds

Platform - Visual Studio 2008 OS - Windows Vista 32 bit SP 1 Processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2370 @ 1.73GHz Memory (RAM) 1.00 GB

Thanks

Amare

Edit
Report