unique_ptr or vector?

Question

If you don\'t need dynamic growth and don\'t know the size of the buffer at compile time, when should unique_ptr be used instead of vector<

Answer 1

std::vector stores the length of both the size of the variable and the size of the allocated data along with the pointer to the data it's self. std::unique_ptr just stores the pointer so there may be a small gain in using std::unique_ptr.

No one has yet mentioned the vector provides iterators and function such and size() where as unique ptr does not. So if iterators are needed use std::vector