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

It may make for disjointed code, but I also like to pull it out to a separate function, and pass both iterators to it.

doStuff(coll.begin(), coll.end())

and have..

template
void doStuff(InIt first, InIt last)
{
   for (InIt curr = first; curr!= last; ++curr)
   {
       // Do stuff
   }
 }

Things to like:

• Never have to mention the ugly iterator type (or think about whether it's const or not-const)
• If there is gain from not calling end() on each iteration, I'm getting it

Things to not like:

• Breaks up the code
• Overhead of additional function call.

But one day, we'll have lambdas!