https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=60621
--- Comment #3 from marc at kdab dot com --- Now, what is _really_ weird is that push_back(T&&) _calls_ emplace_back(). I also tried the magic incantation g++ --param large-unit-insns=100000000 \ --param inline-unit-growth=100000000 \ --param max-inline-insns-single=100000000 \ --param large-function-growth=100000000 \ --param large-function-insns=100000000 -O2 to no avail. I can get the two version to within 80 bytes of text of each other by adding -fno-exceptions, so it's probably related to that. The (implicit) move ctor of S cannot throw, but the std::string(const char*) ctor can. Ie. in the rvalue-push_back case, emplace_back only dabbles in noexcept operations, and in the 3xconst char* case, it needs to deal with three throwing ctors. I can reduce the text size to within a few hundreds of bytes by marking both emplace_back and _M_emplace_back_aux as __attribute__((always_inline)), so something prevents gcc from inlining even when turning the inlining paramters all the way up. I can also reduce the text size by passing std::strings instead of conat char*s: text data bss dec hex filename 5628 672 40 6340 18c4 emplace-vs-push_back.eb 4991 672 40 5703 1647 emplace-vs-push_back.nt 4516 648 40 5204 1454 emplace-vs-push_back.pb (where .nt is EMPLACE_BACK_NOTHROW). Still a large gap... Have we accepted another auto_ptr into the standard? :)