Question

Is it possible to create an STL-like container, or even just an STL-style iterator, for an existing array of POD-type elements?

For example, suppose I have an array of ints. It would be convenient to be able to call some of the STL functions, such as find_if, count_if, or sort directly on this array.

Non-solution: copying the entire array, or even just references to the elements. The goal is to be very memory- and time-saving while hopefully allowing use of other STL algorithms.

Answer 1

You can call many of the STL algorithms directly on a regular C style array – they were designed for this to work. e.g.,:

int ary[100] = ...; // init ...      // note: technically, std::begin(ary) can just be ary in this context std::sort(std::begin(ary), std::end(ary));        // sort the array std::find(std::begin(ary), std::end(ary), pred);  // find some element  // or since C++20: std::rangs::sort(ary); std::ranges::find(ary, pred); 

I think you’ll find that most stuff works just as you would expect.