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

I don't have a particularly strong opinion one way or the other, though iterator lifetime would lean me toward the for-scoped version.

However, readability may be an issue; that can be helped by using a typedef so the iterator type is a bit more manageable:

typedef SomeClass::SomeContainer::iterator sc_iter_t;

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

Not a huge improvement, but a bit.