Question

   list<string>&  whichList = theLists[ myhash( x, theLists.size( ) ) ];

I was wondering how to access a certain position say “i” and see if it was empty at that position.

I was doing it like this:

if(whichList[i] == 0)

but it does not seem to be working.

I realize this is wrong. Any suggestions?

Answer 1

The standard way to find the first list element whose value is the empty string is to use std::find:

std::list<std::string>::iterator it = std::find(whichList.begin(), whichlist.end(), "");

Its position can be computed (expensively) as std::distance(whichList.begin(), it), but it is unlikely that you will need the actual numerical index, assuming that you have made a concious decision that std::list was the correct container type for your application.