Re: How to write previous element in STL list

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:27:42 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<1b9ae7d5-3e87-478b-af15-e83d98665b7c@s15g2000yqs.googlegroups.com>
On Jul 27, 6:16 pm, cornelis van der bent
<kees.van.der.b...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 27 jul, 17:42, Victor Bazarov <v.Abaza...@comAcast.net> wrote:

cornelis van der bent wrote:

In my code I want to go through all combinations of two
items in a list. Here is my code:

    list<Instance*>::iterator i;
    for (i = instances.begin(); i != --instances.end(); i++)
    {
        list<Instance*>::iterator j;
        for (j = i + 1; j < instances.end(); j++)
        {
            // Do something!
        }
    }

I get a big error message at i + 1.


Such an operation is only defined for random-access
iterators, and the list iterator isn't one.


Do you know reason(s) why this has nog been implemented for a
list? The list is doubly-linked, so giving back an iterator
one postion earlier/further does not seem to be a big deal.


But operator+ isn't limited to adding one. Operator+ is defined
when it can be done in constant time; with list, it requires
linear time (with regards to what is being added).

One simple solution would be to define functions succ and prec:

    template< typename ForwardIterator >
    ForwardIterator
    succ( ForwardIterator i )
    {
        ++ i ;
        return i ;
    }

    template< typename BidirectionalIterator >
    BidirectionalIterator
    prec( BidirectionalIterator i )
    {
        -- i ;
        return i ;
    }

More generally, one does wonder why std::advance takes a
reference to the iterator and updates it, rather than taking an
iterator, and returning the modified iterator.

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