How reinterpret_cast works for flattening a std::vector? - c++

Question

I would like to represent a std::vector of a structure containing several integers as a "flatten" vector of integers, without copying the data.
I tried something with a reinterpret_cast as shown below:
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
struct Tuple
{
int a, b, c;
};
int main()
{
// init
std::vector<Tuple> vec1(5);
for(size_t i=0; i<vec1.size(); ++i)
{
vec1[i].a = 3 * i + 0;
vec1[i].b = 3 * i + 1;
vec1[i].c = 3 * i + 2;
}
// flattening
std::vector<int>* vec2 = reinterpret_cast<std::vector<int>*>(&vec1);
// print
std::cout << "vec1 (" << vec1.size() << ") : ";
for(size_t i=0; i<vec1.size(); ++i)
{
std::cout << vec1.at(i).a << " " << vec1.at(i).b << " " << vec1.at(i).c << " ";
}
std::cout << std::endl;
std::cout << "vec2 (" << vec2->size() << ") : ";
for (size_t j = 0; j < vec2->size(); ++j)
{
std::cout << vec2->at(j) << " ";
}
std::cout << std::endl;
return 0;
}
which works well since the output is:
vec1 (5) : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
vec2 (15) : 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
My questions are :
Is this behavior compiler dependent? (I am using g++ 6.3.0)
How vec2 knows that the size of the vector is 15 and not 5?
Is their any other solution avoiding the use of reinterpret_cast? (If I "accidentally" add a double member to Tuple, the resulting issue could be hard to track...)
If vec1 has a specific allocator: std::vector<Tuple,A<Tuple>>, what should be the type of vec2? std::vector<int> or std::vector<int,A<int>> or std::vector<int,A<Tuple>>?

Answer 1

You can't legally reinterpret_cast the entire vector to a different type of vector. But you can legally cast a pointer to struct to a pointer to the first element of that struct. So this works:
std::vector<Tuple> vec1(5);
int* vec2 = &vec1.front().a;
size_t vec2_size = vec1.size() * sizeof(vec1[0]) / sizeof(vec2[0]);
for (size_t j = 0; j < vec2_size; ++j)
{
std::cout << vec2[j] << " ";
}
You need to make sure there's no padding in Tuple, so:
static_assert(sizeof(Tuple) == 3 * sizeof(int), "Tuple must be 3 ints");
To answer your bulleted questions:
Is this behavior compiler dependent?
Your code was illegal.
How vec2 knows that the size of the vector is 15 and not 5?
You got lucky, your code was illegal.
Is their any other solution avoiding the use of reinterpret_cast?
See above.
If vec1 has a specific allocator: std::vector>, what should be the type of vec2?
Same as above, int*.