There was a little discussion about gcc's STL vs STLPort from the perspective of performance, so I ported the test-suite at http://askldjd.wordpress.com/2010/07/24/stl-performance-comparison-round-2-vc9-vc10-stlport/ from windows to Linux and compared my x86_64 gcc 4.5.1's STL to the in-tree STLPort 4.5, results are at http://blogs.linux.ie/caolan/2010/10/12/stl-performance-comparison-gcc-4-5-1-vs-stlport-4-5/ Native STL is typically better, except for large maps and some edge-cases for std::string. What does it all mean, probably very little, except to indicate that there may be something worth investigating by someone who knows libstdc++ to see if there are some wins available in std::map's implementation. C.