C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

12.2. Dynamic Arrays

The new and delete operators allocate objects one at a time. Some applications, need the ability to allocate storage for many objects at once. For example, vectors and strings store their elements in contiguous memory and must allocate several elements at once whenever the container has to be reallocated (§ 9.4, p. 355).

To support such usage, the language and library provide two ways to allocate an array of objects at once. The language defines a second kind of new expression that allocates and initializes an array of objects. The library includes a template class named allocator that lets us separate allocation from initialization. ...