I don't disagree with the spirit of your comment, only the primary example. Most of the dynamically-sized containers I end up needing are one of vector, map, s

I don't disagree with the spirit of your comment, only the primary example. Most of the dynamically-sized containers I end up needing are one of vector, map, set, or list. For the latter three, there's <sys/tree.h> and <sys/queue.h> on most BSDs which provide intrusive macro-based implementations. Sure, they're a bit more clunky to use than e.g., std::map, but I'm neither concerned with their speed nor their reliability (insofar as their implementation). Naturally, when you need to reach for a less-common data structure (e.g., a bloom filter or B+ tree) you'll have to look elsewhere, but feels like the same situation as if you were using C++'s STL.