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c++stliteratorinserter

Insert Iterators vs container's member function inserter

I've been studying stl for the past two weeks and been dealing with alot of vector<T>, deque<T>, and list<T>. All those times I've been using push_back(), push_front(), insert(). Currently though, I've been introduced to "Insert Iterators" which are the following:

  • back_insert_iterator, which is similar to push_back() and does requires the container to have a push_back() function to work
  • front_insert_iterator, which is similar to push_front() and requires the container to have a push_front()
  • insert_iterator, similar insert() and blah blah blah

So I know how to implement all of this. My question is quite simple, what is the difference? Why bother using the Insert Iterators?

Solution

  • Because you can pass them to algorithms, e.g.

    std::copy(v1.begin(), v1.end(), std::back_inserter(v2));