Question

Actually, I have a design question here. Its very simple but the point is:

I have one C++ class that has a STL vector declared as a private member. But the clients of that class need to iterate over this vector.

In C# we have a very handy statement, the Yield, that in cases like that, you write a function returning an IEnumerable and it “yields” you a nice way to iterate over a private container inside that class.

I’m just trying to find an elegant solution for C++, instead of using methods like GetValue(int idx).

Any suggestions?

Example:

class Fat
{
   public:
      Fat();
   // some code here ...

   private:
      void LoadSectors(SECT startPoint);
      std::vector<SECT>sectors;

};

class Storage
{
   public:
      Storage(string CompoundFile);

      //For example, this method will receive a ref to my fat system and iterate over
      //the fat array in order to read every sector. 
      LoadStrem(Fat& fat);

};

This is far simple example.

Answer 1

There’s no syntactic sugar in C++ analogous to yield in C#. If you want to create a class, instances of which should be iterable in the same way stock STL collections are, then you have to implement an iterator for your class, expose it as ::iterator on your type, and provide begin() and end() member functions.