Re: list::end() decrement

From:
Saeed Amrollahi <amrollahi.saeed@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sun, 22 Jul 2012 04:07:40 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<61eb6c21-971a-4b2d-bd23-5b7e54b740c2@googlegroups.com>
On Sunday, July 22, 2012 10:24:58 AM UTC+4:30, JC wrote:

Just to make sure, is the pre/post decrement operator valid on list::end(=

)? In particular, assuming a non-empty, non-volatile list, will...

 
list&lt;x&gt; alist = ...; // non-empty
list&lt;x&gt;::iterator lastiter = -- alist.end();
 
... always result in lastiter being a valid forward iterator for the last=

 element in alist?

 
The reason I&#39;m asking is because the only reference I was able to fin=

d was at http://www.sgi.com/tech/stl/BackInsertionSequence.html, which is t=
rustworthy, but I wasn&#39;t able to find the validity explicitly stated an=
ywhere (not that it isn&#39;t, I just couldn&#39;t find it).

 
Thanks!
J


Hi
I reviewed the C++ final draft international standard (N3290), quickly,
but I didn't find anything specific about end() iterator decrement.
BTW, I compiled and ran the following program under GCC 4.7.0
in two cases: list is empty and list isn't empty. It was fine:
#include <list>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    using namespace std;
    list<int> a_list = {0, 1, 2};
    list<int>::iterator last_iter = --a_list.end();
    cout << *last_iter << '\n';=09

    return 0;
}

I use the following command:
$ g++ -pedantic -pedantic-errors -std=c++11 list_end_iter.c++
$ ./a.out
2
If the list is empty, 0 is the output.
Also, I compiled and ran the following program under Visual Studio 2008:
#include <list>
#include <iostream>

int main()
{
    using namespace std;
    list<int> a_list;
    a_list.push_back(0); a_list.push_back(1); a_list.push_back(2);
    list<int>::iterator last_iter = --a_list.end();
    cout << *last_iter << '\n';

    return 0;
}
It was OK, and the output is 2, but if the list is empty,
there is run-time exception with the following message:
list iterator not decrement-able.

HTH,
  -- Saeed Amrollahi Boyouki

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