Is Iterator initialization inside for loop considered bad style, and why?

Question

Typically you will find STL code like this:

for (SomeClass::SomeContainer::iterator Iter = m_SomeMemberContainerVar.begin(); Iter != m_SomeMemberContainerVar.end         


        

Answer 1

The first form (inside the for loop) is better if the iterator is not needed after the for loop. It limits its scope to the for loop.

I seriously doubt that there is any efficiency gain either way. It can also be made more readable with a typedef.

typedef SomeClass::SomeContainer::iterator MyIter;

for (MyIter Iter = m_SomeMemberContainerVar.begin(); Iter != m_SomeMemberContainerVar.end(); ++Iter)
{
}

I would recommend shorter names ;-)