I have the following code: void foo() { vector<double> v(100,1); // line 1 // some code v = vector<double>(200,2); // line 2 // some code } what happened to the vector of size 100 after the second line? Is it gets cleared by itself? If the answer is yes, how and when it is cleared? By the way, is there any other "easy and clean" ways to change the vector as in line 2? I don't want things like v.resize(200); for (int i=0; i<200; i++) v[i] = 2;