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-<?xml version='1.0'?>
-<!DOCTYPE part PUBLIC "-//OASIS//DTD DocBook XML V4.5//EN"
- "http://www.oasis-open.org/docbook/xml/4.5/docbookx.dtd"
-[ ]>
-
-<part id="manual.iterators" xreflabel="Iterators">
-<?dbhtml filename="iterators.html"?>
-
-<partinfo>
- <keywordset>
- <keyword>
- ISO C++
- </keyword>
- <keyword>
- library
- </keyword>
- </keywordset>
-</partinfo>
-
-<title>
- Iterators
- <indexterm><primary>Iterators</primary></indexterm>
-</title>
-
-<!-- Chapter 01 : Predefined -->
-<chapter id="manual.iterators.predefined" xreflabel="Predefined">
- <title>Predefined</title>
-
- <sect1 id="iterators.predefined.vs_pointers" xreflabel="Versus Pointers">
- <title>Iterators vs. Pointers</title>
- <para><ulink url="../faq/index.html#5_1">FAQ 5.1</ulink> points out that iterators
- are not implemented as pointers. They are a generalization of
- pointers, but they are implemented in libstdc++ as separate classes.
- </para>
- <para>Keeping that simple fact in mind as you design your code will
- prevent a whole lot of difficult-to-understand bugs.
- </para>
- <para>You can think of it the other way 'round, even. Since iterators
- are a generalization, that means that <emphasis>pointers</emphasis> are
- <emphasis>iterators</emphasis>, and that pointers can be used whenever an
- iterator would be. All those functions in the Algorithms chapter
- of the Standard will work just as well on plain arrays and their
- pointers.
- </para>
- <para>That doesn't mean that when you pass in a pointer, it gets wrapped
- into some special delegating iterator-to-pointer class with a layer
- of overhead. (If you think that's the case anywhere, you don't
- understand templates to begin with...) Oh, no; if you pass
- in a pointer, then the compiler will instantiate that template
- using T* as a type, and good old high-speed pointer arithmetic as
- its operations, so the resulting code will be doing exactly the same
- things as it would be doing if you had hand-coded it yourself (for
- the 273rd time).
- </para>
- <para>How much overhead <emphasis>is</emphasis> there when using an iterator class?
- Very little. Most of the layering classes contain nothing but
- typedefs, and typedefs are &quot;meta-information&quot; that simply
- tell the compiler some nicknames; they don't create code. That
- information gets passed down through inheritance, so while the
- compiler has to do work looking up all the names, your runtime code
- does not. (This has been a prime concern from the beginning.)
- </para>
-
-
- </sect1>
-
- <sect1 id="iterators.predefined.end" xreflabel="end() Is One Past the End">
- <title>One Past the End</title>
-
- <para>This starts off sounding complicated, but is actually very easy,
- especially towards the end. Trust me.
- </para>
- <para>Beginners usually have a little trouble understand the whole
- 'past-the-end' thing, until they remember their early algebra classes
- (see, they <emphasis>told</emphasis> you that stuff would come in handy!) and
- the concept of half-open ranges.
- </para>
- <para>First, some history, and a reminder of some of the funkier rules in
- C and C++ for builtin arrays. The following rules have always been
- true for both languages:
- </para>
- <orderedlist>
- <listitem>
- <para>You can point anywhere in the array, <emphasis>or to the first element
- past the end of the array</emphasis>. A pointer that points to one
- past the end of the array is guaranteed to be as unique as a
- pointer to somewhere inside the array, so that you can compare
- such pointers safely.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>You can only dereference a pointer that points into an array.
- If your array pointer points outside the array -- even to just
- one past the end -- and you dereference it, Bad Things happen.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- <listitem>
- <para>Strictly speaking, simply pointing anywhere else invokes
- undefined behavior. Most programs won't puke until such a
- pointer is actually dereferenced, but the standards leave that
- up to the platform.
- </para>
- </listitem>
- </orderedlist>
- <para>The reason this past-the-end addressing was allowed is to make it
- easy to write a loop to go over an entire array, e.g.,
- while (*d++ = *s++);.
- </para>
- <para>So, when you think of two pointers delimiting an array, don't think
- of them as indexing 0 through n-1. Think of them as <emphasis>boundary
- markers</emphasis>:
- </para>
- <programlisting>
-
- beginning end
- | |
- | | This is bad. Always having to
- | | remember to add or subtract one.
- | | Off-by-one bugs very common here.
- V V
- array of N elements
- |---|---|--...--|---|---|
- | 0 | 1 | ... |N-2|N-1|
- |---|---|--...--|---|---|
-
- ^ ^
- | |
- | | This is good. This is safe. This
- | | is guaranteed to work. Just don't
- | | dereference 'end'.
- beginning end
-
- </programlisting>
- <para>See? Everything between the boundary markers is part of the array.
- Simple.
- </para>
- <para>Now think back to your junior-high school algebra course, when you
- were learning how to draw graphs. Remember that a graph terminating
- with a solid dot meant, &quot;Everything up through this point,&quot;
- and a graph terminating with an open dot meant, &quot;Everything up
- to, but not including, this point,&quot; respectively called closed
- and open ranges? Remember how closed ranges were written with
- brackets, <emphasis>[a,b]</emphasis>, and open ranges were written with parentheses,
- <emphasis>(a,b)</emphasis>?
- </para>
- <para>The boundary markers for arrays describe a <emphasis>half-open range</emphasis>,
- starting with (and including) the first element, and ending with (but
- not including) the last element: <emphasis>[beginning,end)</emphasis>. See, I
- told you it would be simple in the end.
- </para>
- <para>Iterators, and everything working with iterators, follows this same
- time-honored tradition. A container's <code>begin()</code> method returns
- an iterator referring to the first element, and its <code>end()</code>
- method returns a past-the-end iterator, which is guaranteed to be
- unique and comparable against any other iterator pointing into the
- middle of the container.
- </para>
- <para>Container constructors, container methods, and algorithms, all take
- pairs of iterators describing a range of values on which to operate.
- All of these ranges are half-open ranges, so you pass the beginning
- iterator as the starting parameter, and the one-past-the-end iterator
- as the finishing parameter.
- </para>
- <para>This generalizes very well. You can operate on sub-ranges quite
- easily this way; functions accepting a <emphasis>[first,last)</emphasis> range
- don't know or care whether they are the boundaries of an entire {array,
- sequence, container, whatever}, or whether they only enclose a few
- elements from the center. This approach also makes zero-length
- sequences very simple to recognize: if the two endpoints compare
- equal, then the {array, sequence, container, whatever} is empty.
- </para>
- <para>Just don't dereference <code>end()</code>.
- </para>
-
- </sect1>
-</chapter>
-
-<!-- Chapter 02 : Stream -->
-
-</part>