C++ Truths

Sometimes it is useful to be able iterate over all the elements of a std::map using standard algorithms like std::copy(), std::count(), std::min_element(), std::max_element(). These standard functions do not work out of the box using std::map::iterator. For example, if you want to print all the elements of a map to standard output, you can't use the following popular copy-ostream_iterator idiom. std::map <std::string, int> m; std::copy (m.begin(), m.end(), std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout, "\n")); // does not compile This is because value_type of the map::iterator is a pair. In other words, if iter is a map<T,U>::iterator then *iter gives pair<T,U> and not U. If we could somehow get hold of pair::second (i.e. type U) instead of pair<T,U> all the above mentioned algorithms can be used out of the box. The approach I took to solve this problem is to write an iterator adaptor that behaves likes any general bidirectional_iterator. In general, ...