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I am working on a toy project where I have a container for which I would like to write an iterator that iterates over the values in the container. Because the values are stored in a (c-style) arra...
#1: Initial revision
When to use custom iterators versus pointers
I am working on a toy project where I have a container for which I would like to write an iterator that iterates over the values in the container. Because the values are stored in a (c-style) array, this would look something like this: ```c++ class MyClass { int _data[10] {}; public: class MyIterator; MyIterator begin(); MyIterator end(); }; class MyClass::MyIterator final { int* _position {}; public: using iterator_category = std::contiguous_iterator_tag; using value_type = int; using difference_type = std::ptrdiff_t; using pointer = value_type*; using reference = value_type&; explicit MyIterator(int* from) : _position { from } {} reference operator*() const { return *_position; } pointer operator->() const { return _position; } MyIterator& operator++() { ++_position; return *this; } MyIterator operator++(int) { MyIterator tmp { *this }; operator++(); return tmp; } MyIterator& operator--() { --_position; return *this; } MyIterator operator--(int) { MyIterator tmp { *this }; operator--(); return tmp; } MyIterator operator += (const difference_type& n) { _position += n; return *this; } MyIterator operator -= (const difference_type& n) { _position -= n; return *this; } MyIterator operator[](const difference_type& n) { return MyIterator(_position + n); } friend auto operator<=>(MyIterator, MyIterator) = default; friend auto operator+(MyIterator it, difference_type n) { MyIterator result { it }; result += n; return result; } friend auto operator-(MyIterator it, difference_type n) { MyIterator result { it }; result -= n; return result; } friend auto operator+(difference_type n, MyIterator it) { return it + n; } }; MyClass::MyIterator MyClass::begin() { return MyClass::MyIterator(&_data[0]); } MyClass::MyIterator MyClass::end() { return MyClass::MyIterator(&_data[0] + 10); } ``` However, while writing this code, I couldn't help but notice that I am essentially writing a wrapper around pointer arithmetic. Instead of writing a custom iterator, everything seems to work just as well when using the following, much more concise code: ```c++ class MyClass2 { int _data[10] {}; public: using MyIterator = int*; MyIterator begin(); MyIterator end(); }; MyClass2::MyIterator MyClass2::begin() { return &_data[0]; } MyClass2::MyIterator MyClass2::end() { return &_data[0] + 10; } ``` I understand that using a raw pointer as an iterator is enabled by the specialisation of `std::iterator_traits`. So why would/should I bother encapsulating the iterator in a full class with trivial code when using a raw pointer works just as well? I do understand that there are scenarios where iterators require more complexity than plain pointer arithmetic. However, I suspect that most iterators can be written as iterating over an array. Is there any reason to wrap an iterator for array-like classes in a custom iterator class? If yes, is there any class in the standard library that implements this? I could only find `std::iterator`, but this is deprecated and doesn't really implement anything...