Question

I have a class called PointList, which holds a vector of Point * objects as its main data. I want to iterate over the points the same way you would a vector, kind of like this:

for (vector<Point *>::iterator it = point_list->begin(); it != point_list->end(); ++it)

Clearly the begin() and end() functions I write can just return the vector’s begin/end functions that they hold, but what is the return type of these functions?

Answer 1

If I have understood the question right, the answer is right in your question. You already use the return value and type of begin and end in your piece of code.

vector<Point *>::iterator it = point_list->begin();

clearly, it holds the return value of begin() and its type is well known:

vector<Point *>::iterator

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By the way, a little off-topic – why point_list is pointer to vector, not an object? And second, why it’s called list, as it’s vector? Use vector, or array, or sequence, but not list, as it could be misleading. list is a STL container, different from vector.