Re: Does std::unique invalidate iterators ever?

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:01:05 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<04934c55-437d-4ddd-b6bb-cda58ce10d2f@f19g2000yqh.googlegroups.com>
On Mar 24, 11:32 am, Alan Woodland <aj...@aber.ac.uk> wrote:

Is this well defined behaviour?

#include <vector>
#include <string>
#include <algorithm>

int main() {
   std::vector<std::string> content;

   content.push_back("foo");
   content.push_back("bar");
   content.push_back("foo");

   // make sure the content is unique, discard any duplicates
   std::sort(content.begin(), content.end());
   content.erase(std::unique(content.begin(), content.end()),
content.end());
   return 0;
}

My concern is that the order of evaluation of the arguments
passed to erase() is unspecified, and therefore that unique
could invalidate the iterator returned by end(). If I've
understood things correctly then unique can't invalidate any
iterators and so the example code is well defined?


Iterators are never invalidated unless the topology of the
container is modified. Algorithms never modify the topology of
the container, since they don't even know that the container
exists.

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