A container is basically a structure holding a collection. In that case, the container also acts as an allocator (the feature can be embedded directly or not)

A container is basically a structure holding a collection. In that case, the container also acts as an allocator (the feature can be embedded directly or not) The only practical difference is that a container should provide some facilities for traversal, while the allocator is only taking care of allocating and freeing. From my experience, I very rarely allocate things without keeping them in a kind of container, it can be something as simple as an array of references.