Re: Why is the iterator pass-by-value in the STL?

From:
annamalai <annamalai.gurusami@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
Sun, 16 Nov 2008 16:12:10 CST
Message-ID:
<1fee8305-866f-4fc4-a758-e9b938bb7bf7@w1g2000prk.googlegroups.com>
On Nov 16, 10:59 am, Ruki <war...@gmail.com> wrote:

Why is the iterator pass-by-value in the STL?
I think it is more efficient and safe by passing a const
reference,isn't it?

void func(const_iterator first, const_iterator last);
void func(const_iterator const& first, const_iterator const& last);


Maybe because the operator++ cannot be used in the 2nd form of func
above. Here is a small example to demonstrate the problem:

$ cat value.cc
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>

typedef std::vector<int>::const_iterator I;

void good(I from, I to) {
   while ( from++ != to ) {
       std::cout << *from << std::endl;
   }
}

void isThisBetter(I const& from, I const &to) {
   // Cannot do from++, so create temporary explicitly.
   I cur(from);
   while ( cur++ != to ) {
       std::cout << *cur << std::endl;
   }
}

int main() {
   std::vector<int> dlg;
   dlg.push_back(1);
   dlg.push_back(2);
   dlg.push_back(7);
   dlg.push_back(8);
   good(dlg.begin(), dlg.end());
   isThisBetter(dlg.begin(), dlg.end());
}

$ g++ -Wall -Wall value.cc
$ ./a
2
7
8
0
2
7
8
0
$

Rgds,
anna

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