More C++ Idioms/Free Function Allocators

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

As seen in boost::ptr_container

Motivation: allocators have serious problems, because they change the underlying type of the container.

struct user_allocator_nedmalloc
{
	typedef std::size_t size_type;
	typedef std::ptrdiff_t difference_type;
 
	static inline char* malloc(const size_type bytes) {
		return reinterpret_cast<char*>(nedmalloc(bytes));
	}
 
	static inline void free(char* const block) {
		nedfree(block);
	}
};

This idiom is wildly superior to the way that std::allocators work the whole idiom is outlined here:

http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2005/n1850.pdf

someone please distill that whole thing into one short idiom