1<chapter xmlns="http://docbook.org/ns/docbook" version="5.0" 
2	 xml:id="std.iterators" xreflabel="Iterators">
3<?dbhtml filename="iterators.html"?>
4
5<info><title>
6  Iterators
7  <indexterm><primary>Iterators</primary></indexterm>
8</title>
9  <keywordset>
10    <keyword>ISO C++</keyword>
11    <keyword>library</keyword>
12  </keywordset>
13</info>
14
15
16
17<!-- Sect1 01 : Predefined -->
18<section xml:id="std.iterators.predefined" xreflabel="Predefined"><info><title>Predefined</title></info>
19  
20
21  <section xml:id="iterators.predefined.vs_pointers" xreflabel="Versus Pointers"><info><title>Iterators vs. Pointers</title></info>
22    
23   <para>
24     The following
25FAQ <link linkend="faq.iterator_as_pod">entry</link> points out that
26iterators are not implemented as pointers.  They are a generalization
27of pointers, but they are implemented in libstdc++ as separate
28classes.
29   </para>
30   <para>
31     Keeping that simple fact in mind as you design your code will
32      prevent a whole lot of difficult-to-understand bugs.
33   </para>
34   <para>
35     You can think of it the other way 'round, even.  Since iterators
36     are a generalization, that means
37     that <emphasis>pointers</emphasis> are
38      <emphasis>iterators</emphasis>, and that pointers can be used
39     whenever an iterator would be.  All those functions in the
40     Algorithms section of the Standard will work just as well on plain
41     arrays and their pointers.
42   </para>
43   <para>
44     That doesn't mean that when you pass in a pointer, it gets
45      wrapped into some special delegating iterator-to-pointer class
46      with a layer of overhead.  (If you think that's the case
47      anywhere, you don't understand templates to begin with...)  Oh,
48      no; if you pass in a pointer, then the compiler will instantiate
49      that template using T* as a type, and good old high-speed
50      pointer arithmetic as its operations, so the resulting code will
51      be doing exactly the same things as it would be doing if you had
52      hand-coded it yourself (for the 273rd time).
53   </para>
54   <para>
55     How much overhead <emphasis>is</emphasis> there when using an
56      iterator class?  Very little.  Most of the layering classes
57      contain nothing but typedefs, and typedefs are
58      "meta-information" that simply tell the compiler some
59      nicknames; they don't create code.  That information gets passed
60      down through inheritance, so while the compiler has to do work
61      looking up all the names, your runtime code does not.  (This has
62      been a prime concern from the beginning.)
63   </para>
64
65
66  </section>
67
68  <section xml:id="iterators.predefined.end" xreflabel="end() Is One Past the End"><info><title>One Past the End</title></info>
69    
70
71   <para>This starts off sounding complicated, but is actually very easy,
72      especially towards the end.  Trust me.
73   </para>
74   <para>Beginners usually have a little trouble understand the whole
75      'past-the-end' thing, until they remember their early algebra classes
76      (see, they <emphasis>told</emphasis> you that stuff would come in handy!) and
77      the concept of half-open ranges.
78   </para>
79   <para>First, some history, and a reminder of some of the funkier rules in
80      C and C++ for builtin arrays.  The following rules have always been
81      true for both languages:
82   </para>
83   <orderedlist inheritnum="ignore" continuation="restarts">
84      <listitem>
85	<para>You can point anywhere in the array, <emphasis>or to the first element
86	  past the end of the array</emphasis>.  A pointer that points to one
87	  past the end of the array is guaranteed to be as unique as a
88	  pointer to somewhere inside the array, so that you can compare
89	  such pointers safely.
90	</para>
91      </listitem>
92      <listitem>
93	<para>You can only dereference a pointer that points into an array.
94	  If your array pointer points outside the array -- even to just
95	  one past the end -- and you dereference it, Bad Things happen.
96	</para>
97      </listitem>
98      <listitem>
99	<para>Strictly speaking, simply pointing anywhere else invokes
100	  undefined behavior.  Most programs won't puke until such a
101	  pointer is actually dereferenced, but the standards leave that
102	  up to the platform.
103	</para>
104      </listitem>
105   </orderedlist>
106   <para>The reason this past-the-end addressing was allowed is to make it
107      easy to write a loop to go over an entire array, e.g.,
108      while (*d++ = *s++);.
109   </para>
110   <para>So, when you think of two pointers delimiting an array, don't think
111      of them as indexing 0 through n-1.  Think of them as <emphasis>boundary
112      markers</emphasis>:
113   </para>
114   <programlisting>
115
116   beginning            end
117     |                   |
118     |                   |               This is bad.  Always having to
119     |                   |               remember to add or subtract one.
120     |                   |               Off-by-one bugs very common here.
121     V                   V
122	array of N elements
123     |---|---|--...--|---|---|
124     | 0 | 1 |  ...  |N-2|N-1|
125     |---|---|--...--|---|---|
126
127     ^                       ^
128     |                       |
129     |                       |           This is good.  This is safe.  This
130     |                       |           is guaranteed to work.  Just don't
131     |                       |           dereference 'end'.
132   beginning                end
133
134   </programlisting>
135   <para>See?  Everything between the boundary markers is chapter of the array.
136      Simple.
137   </para>
138   <para>Now think back to your junior-high school algebra course, when you
139      were learning how to draw graphs.  Remember that a graph terminating
140      with a solid dot meant, "Everything up through this point,"
141      and a graph terminating with an open dot meant, "Everything up
142      to, but not including, this point," respectively called closed
143      and open ranges?  Remember how closed ranges were written with
144      brackets, <emphasis>[a,b]</emphasis>, and open ranges were written with parentheses,
145      <emphasis>(a,b)</emphasis>?
146   </para>
147   <para>The boundary markers for arrays describe a <emphasis>half-open range</emphasis>,
148      starting with (and including) the first element, and ending with (but
149      not including) the last element:  <emphasis>[beginning,end)</emphasis>.  See, I
150      told you it would be simple in the end.
151   </para>
152   <para>Iterators, and everything working with iterators, follows this same
153      time-honored tradition.  A container's <code>begin()</code> method returns
154      an iterator referring to the first element, and its <code>end()</code>
155      method returns a past-the-end iterator, which is guaranteed to be
156      unique and comparable against any other iterator pointing into the
157      middle of the container.
158   </para>
159   <para>Container constructors, container methods, and algorithms, all take
160      pairs of iterators describing a range of values on which to operate.
161      All of these ranges are half-open ranges, so you pass the beginning
162      iterator as the starting parameter, and the one-past-the-end iterator
163      as the finishing parameter.
164   </para>
165   <para>This generalizes very well.  You can operate on sub-ranges quite
166      easily this way; functions accepting a <emphasis>[first,last)</emphasis> range
167      don't know or care whether they are the boundaries of an entire {array,
168      sequence, container, whatever}, or whether they only enclose a few
169      elements from the center.  This approach also makes zero-length
170      sequences very simple to recognize:  if the two endpoints compare
171      equal, then the {array, sequence, container, whatever} is empty.
172   </para>
173   <para>Just don't dereference <code>end()</code>.
174   </para>
175
176  </section>
177</section>
178
179<!-- Sect1 02 : Stream -->
180
181</chapter>
182