Question

I’ve stumbled upon what I believe is a bug in the stl algorithm advance.

When I’m advancing the iterator off of the end of the container, I get inconsistent results. Sometimes I get container.end(), sometimes I get the last element. I’ve illustrated this with the following code:

#include <algorithm>
#include <cstdio>
#include <set>

using namespace std;
typedef set<int> tMap;

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    tMap::iterator i;
    tMap the_map;

    for (int i=0; i<10; i++)
        the_map.insert(i);

#if EXPERIMENT==1
    i = the_map.begin();
#elif EXPERIMENT==2
    i = the_map.find(4);
#elif EXPERIMENT==3
    i = the_map.find(5);
#elif EXPERIMENT==4
    i = the_map.find(6);
#elif EXPERIMENT==5
    i = the_map.find(9);
#elif EXPERIMENT==6
    i = the_map.find(2000);
#else
    i = the_map.end();
#endif

    advance(i, 100);

    if (i == the_map.end())
        printf("the end\n");
    else
        printf("wuh? %d\n", *i);

    return 0;
}

Which I get the following unexpected (according to me) behavior in experiment 3 and 5 where I get the last element instead of the_map.end().

[tim@saturn advance]$ uname -srvmpio
Linux 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6 #1 SMP Mon Oct 16 14:37:32 EDT 2006 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ --version
g++ (GCC) 4.1.1 20061011 (Red Hat 4.1.1-30)
Copyright (C) 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=1 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
the end
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=2 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
the end
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=3 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
wuh? 9
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=4 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
the end
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=5 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
wuh? 9
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=6 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
the end
[tim@saturn advance]$ g++ -DEXPERIMENT=7 advance.cc
[tim@saturn advance]$ ./a.out
the end
[tim@saturn advance]$

From the sgi website (see link at top), it has the following example:

list<int> L;
L.push_back(0);
L.push_back(1);

list<int>::iterator i = L.begin();
advance(i, 2);
assert(i == L.end());

I would think that the assertion should apply to other container types, no?

What am I missing?

Thanks!

Answer 1

When I’m advancing the iterator off of the end of the container, …

… you get undefined behavior. Whatever happens then, is fine according to the C++ standard. That could be much worse than inconsistent results.