Question

This is basically what I want to do:

bool special_compare(const string& s1, const string& s2)
{
    // match with wild card
}

std::vector<string> strings;

strings.push_back("Hello");
strings.push_back("World");

// I want this to find "Hello"
find(strings.begin(), strings.end(), "hell*", special_compare);

// And I want this to find "World"
find(strings.begin(), strings.end(), "**rld", special_compare);

But std::find doesn’t work like that unfortunately. So using only the STL, how can I do something like this?

Answer 1

Based on your comments, you’re probably looking for this:

struct special_compare : public std::unary_function<std::string, bool>
{
  explicit special_compare(const std::string &baseline) : baseline(baseline) {}
  bool operator() (const std::string &arg)
  { return somehow_compare(arg, baseline); }
  std::string baseline;
}

std::find_if(strings.begin(), strings.end(), special_compare("hell*"));