I have a custom vector container that internally stores item a linear array. Last night, I was trying to implement custom iterators for my class to be able to use them with STL algorithms. I have had some success that you can see in here:
Live example with custom iterators
While doing so, I discovered I can merely pass raw pointers to STL algorithm and they just seem to work fine. Here's the example without any iterators:
#include <cstddef>
#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <algorithm>
template<typename T>
class my_array{
T* data_;
std::size_t size_;
public:
my_array()
: data_(NULL), size_(0)
{}
my_array(std::size_t size)
: data_(new T[size]), size_(size)
{}
my_array(const my_array<T>& other){
size_ = other.size_;
data_ = new T[size_];
for (std::size_t i = 0; i<size_; i++)
data_[i] = other.data_[i];
}
my_array(const T* first, const T* last){
size_ = last - first;
data_ = new T[size_];
for (std::size_t i = 0; i<size_; i++)
data_[i] = first[i];
}
~my_array(){
delete [] data_;
}
const my_array<T>& operator=(const my_array<T>& other){
size_ = other.size_;
data_ = new T[size_];
for (std::size_t i = 0; i<size_; i++)
data_[i] = other.data_[i];
return other;
}
const T& operator[](std::size_t idx) const {return data_[idx];}
T& operator[](std::size_t& idx) {return data_[idx];}
std::size_t size(){return size_;}
T* begin(){return data_;}
T* end(){return data_+size_;}
};
template<typename T>
void print(T t) {
std::cout << t << std::endl;
}
int main(){
typedef float scalar_t;
scalar_t list [] = {1, 3, 5, 2, 4, 3, 5, 10, 10};
my_array<scalar_t> a(list, list+sizeof(list)/sizeof(scalar_t));
// works!
for (scalar_t* it = a.begin(), *end = a.end();
it != end; ++it)
std::cout << ' ' << *it;
std::cout << std::endl;
// works!
std::for_each(a.begin(), a.end(), print<scalar_t>);
std::cout << std::endl;
// works!
my_array<int> b(a.size());
std::copy(a.begin(), a.end(), b.begin());
// works!
scalar_t* end = std::remove(a.begin(), a.end(), 5);
std::for_each(a.begin(), end, print<scalar_t>);
std::cout << std::endl;
// works!
std::random_shuffle(a.begin(), end);
std::for_each(a.begin(), end, print<scalar_t>);
std::cout << std::endl;
// works!
std::cout << "Counts of 3 in array = " << std::count(a.begin(), end, 3) << std::endl << std::endl;
// works!
std::sort(a.begin(), end);
std::for_each(a.begin(), end, print<scalar_t>);
std::cout << std::endl;
// works!
if (!std::binary_search(a.begin(), a.end(), 5))
std::cout << "Removed!" << std::endl;
return 0;
}
Live example without iterators
My questions here are the following:
- Does this always work for containers that have linear storage? I know that this would not work for linked-lists for example.
- If they do work in this situation, why should I ever go through the hassle of implementing iterators anyway? I know how iterators generalize my code and whatnot, but if this simple array is all I ever need then I don't see the point.
- What are the negative issues of what I'm doing if this approach would always work? For one thing, I can see I'm breaking data encapsulation.