What's the time complexity of iterating through a std::set
/std::multiset
/std::map
/std::multimap
? I believe that it is linear in the size of the set/map, but not so sure. Is it specified in the language standard?
In the C++11 working draft, the answer can be found in [iterator.requirements.general] p8:
All the categories of iterators require only those functions that are realizable for a given category in constant time (amortized).
Since each operation on an iterator must be constant time, iterating through n
elements must be O(n)
.