Re: Consecutive integers in a vector

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Thu, 15 Nov 2007 06:25:35 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<96d3b4e9-edef-4513-ad44-3898c0562abf@i37g2000hsd.googlegroups.com>
On Nov 14, 2:07 pm, cesco <fd.calabr...@gmail.com> wrote:

say I have a vector like the following:

vec = [1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 9, 11]

and I'd like to know via a function (for example,
ConsecutiveIntegers(vec, N)) whether there are N consecutive integers.
So, for example, if N=3 then ConsecutiveIntegers(vec, N) should return
true because 1, 2, 3 and 5, 6, 7 are consecutive. If N=4, then
ConsecutiveIntegers(vec, N) should return false because there are no 4
consecutive integers.

Is there in STL an algorithm or is there a combination of algorithms
to accomplish such a task.


Using find_if with something like the following as predicate
will probably work:

    template< size_t N >
    class Consecutive
    {
    public:
        bool operator()( int i )
        {
            if ( ! myList.empty() && myList.back() + 1 != i ) {
                myList.clear() ;
            }
            myList.push_back( i ) ;
            return myList.size() == N ;
        }

    private:
        std::vector< int > myList ;
    } ;

I say probably, because formally, the implementation can copy
the predicate any number of times, and use different copies on
each element. (Predicates are supposed to be state-less.) To
be formally correct, you need to add a level of indirection,
either using a boost::shared_ptr< std::vector< int > >, and
initializing it in a constructor, or some other scheme. While I
can't imagine any reasonable implementation where the above
wouldn't work, and it does work with all of the implementations
I have at hand, I'd probably use the indirection in production
code, just to be sure.

Note that this will undoubtably be significantly slower than
writing a function yourself which has state, and does the
checks, with just one pass and without all the copying. IMHO,
it's also less readable---the best solution remains:

    size_t matchCount = 0 ;
    if ( iter != end ) {
        ++ iter
        matchCount = 1 ;
        while ( matchCount < N && iter != end ) {
            if ( *(iter - 1) + 1 == *iter ) {
                ++ matchCount ;
            } else {
                matchCount = 1 ;
            }
            ++ iter ;
        }
    }
    return matchCount == N ;

(As written, this requires a random access iterator, like the
one for vector. It would be simple to adopt it to use two
iterators, however, one running one position behind the other,
in which case a forward iterator is sufficient.)

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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