Efficient way to read and store a large map?

[WilliamERoberts]

I am working on a project for a class where I need to read and store a very large, 3 dimensional map (they say I need to be able to handle Millions*Millions*Millions). I will need to read this map a lot while it's in my program. What is the best way to read in and store this map? I have time limits on how long my program can take to run, so I need an efficient method.

Thanks

[Computergeek01]

http://www.cplusplus.com/reference/stl/vector/

This is your best option since you don't have a specific size AND it has to run fast. I would argue with that if there is ANY antivirus program running on the system that it would compromise the results wiether it is enabled or not.

EDIT: Ok, I NEED to know what is this project about?

[WilliamERoberts]

The project is about solving a maze. I don't assume they'll be running Anti-virus software while they are running my code.

As for vectors, according to the link, arrays have the same complexity for those operations (though if arrays are still faster, let me know), but require less memory. We do have a memory limit was well, and if there isn't an advantage of vectors over arrays other than that, should I just use arrays?

To clarify, I will not need to resize the array. Once the map has been read in it will not be resized.