Why is “!=” used with iterators instead of “<”?

Question

I'm used to writing loops like this:

for (std::size_t index = 0; index < foo.size(); index++)
{
    // Do stuff with foo[index].
}

But when I see iterator loops in others' code, they look like this:

for (Foo::Iterator iterator = foo.begin(); iterator != foo.end(); iterator++)
{
    // Do stuff with *Iterator.
}

I find the iterator != foo.end() to be offputting. It can also be dangerous if iterator is incremented by more than one.

It seems more "correct" to use iterator < foo.end(), but I never see that in real code. Why not?

Answer 1

All iterators are equality comparable. Only random access iterators are relationally comparable. Input iterators, forward iterators, and bidirectional iterators are not relationally comparable.

Thus, the comparison using != is more generic and flexible than the comparison using <.

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There are different categories of iterators because not all ranges of elements have the same access properties. For example,

• if you have an iterators into an array (a contiguous sequence of elements), it's trivial to relationally compare them; you just have to compare the indices of the pointed to elements (or the pointers to them, since the iterators likely just contain pointers to the elements);

• if you have iterators into a linked list and you want to test whether one iterator is "less than" another iterator, you have to walk the nodes of the linked list from the one iterator until either you reach the other iterator or you reach the end of the list.

The rule is that all operations on an iterator should have constant time complexity (or, at a minimum, sublinear time complexity). You can always perform an equality comparison in constant time since you just have to compare whether the iterators point to the same object. So, all iterators are equality comparable.

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Further, you aren't allowed to increment an iterator past the end of the range into which it points. So, if you end up in a scenario where it != foo.end() does not do the same thing as it < foo.end(), you already have undefined behavior because you've iterated past the end of the range.

The same is true for pointers into an array: you aren't allowed to increment a pointer beyond one-past-the-end of the array; a program that does so exhibits undefined behavior. (The same is obviously not true for indices, since indices are just integers.)

Some Standard Library implementations (like the Visual C++ Standard Library implementation) have helpful debug code that will raise an assertion when you do something illegal with an iterator like this.

Answer 2

Short answer: Because Iterator is not a number, it's an object.

Longer answer: There are more collections than linear arrays. Trees and hashes, for example, don't really lend themselves to "this index is before this other index". For a tree, two indices that live on separate branches, for example. Or, any two indices in a hash -- they have no order at all, so any order you impose on them is arbitrary.

You don't have to worry about "missing" End(). It is also not a number, it is an object that represents the end of the collection. It doesn't make sense to have an iterator that goes past it, and indeed it cannot.