What is the right approach when using STL container for median calculation?

Posted by sharkin on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by sharkin
Published on 2009-11-12T00:32:32Z Indexed on 2010/04/05 16:03 UTC
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c++

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stl

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containers

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median

Let's say I need to retrieve the median from a sequence of 1000000 random numeric values.

If using anything but STL::list, I have no (built-in) way to sort sequence for median calculation.

If using STL::list, I can't randomly access values to retrieve middle (median) of sorted sequence.

Is it better to implement sorting myself and go with e.g. STL::vector, or is it better to use STL::list and use STL::list::iterator to for-loop-walk to the median value? The latter seems less overheadish, but also feels more ugly..

Or are there more and better alternatives for me?

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