> And that swap also invalidates some of std::vector's iterators as well - specifically the end() iterator.
And they don't invalidate the iterators that point to actual elements, which was kind of the entire point I was making. Don't let that stop you from trying to make it look like I'm just blurting out nonsense, though.
You made a broad, vague claim that iterator guarantees were broken. You misrepresented it as being a much larger issue that it actually is. Nearly all iterator guarantees are not broken. One very specific guarantee in one very specific case is, that's it. And it's a rare, not general, case at that, making the trade-off necessary to achieve it a bad default.
returning, moving, swapping a small vector would break any pointer to an element. That's a big deal. Interior pointers are used all the time (that's, more than performance, the primary reason that reserve exist).
