C++ named requirements: LegacyOutputIterator - cppreference.com (original) (raw)

A LegacyOutputIterator is a LegacyIterator that can write to the pointed-to element.

An example of a type that implements LegacyOutputIterator is std::ostream_iterator.

When LegacyForwardIterator, LegacyBidirectionalIterator, or LegacyRandomAccessIterator satisfies the LegacyOutputIterator requirements in addition to its own requirements, it is described as mutable.

[edit] Requirements

The type X satisfies LegacyOutputIterator if

And, given

The following expressions must be valid and have their specified effects

Expression Return Equivalent expression Pre-condition Post-conditions Notes
*r = o (not used) r is dereferenceable r is incrementable After this operation r is not required to be dereferenceable and any copies of the previous value of r are no longer required to be dereferenceable or incrementable.
++r X& r is incrementable r and ++r designate the same iterator object, r is dereferenceable or past-the-end After this operation r is not required to be incrementable and any copies of the previous value of r are no longer required to be dereferenceable or incrementable.
r++ convertible to const X& X temp = r; ++r; return temp;
*r++ = o (not used) *r = o; ++r;

[edit] Notes

The only valid use of operator* with an output iterator is on the left of an assignment: operator* may return a proxy object, which defines a member operator= (which may be a template).

Equality and inequality may not be defined for output iterators. Even if an operator== is defined, x == y need not imply ++x == ++y.

Assignment through the same value of an output iterator happens only once: algorithms on output iterators must be single-pass algorithms.

Assignment through an output iterator is expected to alternate with incrementing. Double-increment is undefined behavior (C++ standard currently claims that double increment is supported, contrary to the STL documentation; this is LWG issue 2035).

Pure output-only iterator is allowed to declare its iterator_traits<X>::value_type, iterator_traits<X>::difference_type, iterator_traits<X>::pointer, and iterator_traits<X>::reference to be void (and iterators such as std::back_insert_iterator do just that except for difference_type, which is now defined to satisfy std::output_iterator(since C++20)).

[edit] Standard library

The following standard library iterators are output iterators that are not forward iterators:

[edit] See also

| | specifies that a type is an output iterator for a given value type, that is, values of that type can be written to it and it can be both pre- and post-incremented (concept) [edit] | | | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ | | Iterator library | provides definitions for iterators, iterator traits, adaptors, and utility functions |