Question

I’m using a C++ std::multimap and I have to loop over two different keys. Is there an efficient way to do this other than creating two ranges and looping over those ranges seperately?

This is the way im doing it now:

std::pair<std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator,std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator> range;
std::pair<std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator,std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator> range2;

// get the range of String key
range = multimap.equal_range(key1);
range2 = multimap.equal_range(key2);

for (std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator it = range.first; it != range.second; ++it)
{
    ...
}
for (std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator it2 = range2.first; it2 != range2.second; ++it2)
{
    ...
}

Answer 1

The code you started with is the most straightforward.

If you’d really like to iterate over two ranges in the same loop, you can create a custom iterator that takes two iterator ranges, iterates over the first until it’s done then switches to the second. This is probably more trouble than it’s worth, as you’d need to implement all of the iterator members yourself.

Edit: I was overthinking this; it’s easy just to modify the two loops into a single one.

for (std::multimap<String, Object*>::iterator it = range.first; it != range2.second; ++it)
{
    if (it == range.second)
    {
        it = range2.first;
        if (it == range2.second)
            break;
    }
    ...
}