C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

13.6. Moving Objects

One of the major features in the new standard is the ability to move rather than copy an object. As we saw in § 13.1.1 (p. 497), copies are made in many circumstances. In some of these circumstances, an object is immediately destroyed after it is copied. In those cases, moving, rather than copying, the object can provide a significant performance boost.

As we’ve just seen, our StrVec class is a good example of this kind of superfluous copy. During reallocation, there is no need to copy—rather than move—the elements from the old memory to the new. A second reason to move rather than copy occurs in classes such as the IO or ...