Question

I’d like get far next value for STL list iterator but it doesn’t implement operator+, vector has it though. Why and how can I get the value where I want?

I think I can do that if I call operator++ several times, but isn’t that a little bit dirty?

What I want to do is the following:

list<int> l;
...omitted...
list<int>::iterator itr = l.begin() + 3; // but, list iterator does not have
                                         // operator+

What is the best solution for what I want?

Answer 1

You can also use std::next (and prev) or the equivalents provided by Boost if you don’t have access to C++11.

list<int>::iterator itr = std::next(l.begin(), 3);

Rationale: std::advance is awkward to use (it works by side-effect, not by returning a copy).