Advance iterator for the std::vector std::advance VS operator +?

Question

I found myself writing the following a lot:

int location =2;
vector vec;
vector::iterator it=vec.begin();

/..../
std::advance(it, location         


        

Answer 1

std::adnvance is generic - it is useful if you don't always know type of underlying container - it works in all cases.

Yet it is efficient: std::advance will do an optimisation if it passed an RandomAccessIterator (like one from std::vector) and will increase iterator in loop for ForwardAccessIterator (as like one in std::list).