This page is a snapshot from the LWG issues list, see the Library Active Issues List for more information and the meaning of C++17 status.
Section: 25.4.3 [iterator.operations] Status: C++17 Submitter: Eric Niebler Opened: 2013-12-24 Last modified: 2017-09-07
Priority: 4
View other active issues in [iterator.operations].
View all other issues in [iterator.operations].
View all issues with C++17 status.
Discussion:
In LWG 1011, std::next and std::prev were changed from accepting InputIterator to accepting ForwardIterator. This needlessly excludes perfectly legitimate use cases. Consider the following hypothetical range-based implementation of drop, which creates a view of a range without the first n elements:
template<typename Distance, typename InputRange>
iterator_range<range_iterator_t<InputRange>>
drop(Distance n, InputRange& rng)
{
return make_iterator_range(
std::next(std::begin(rng), n),
std::end(rng)
);
}
I believe this to be a legitimate use case that is currently outlawed by the standard without cause. See the discussion beginning at c++std-lib-35313 for an in-depth discussion of the issue, in which Howard Hinnant agreed that it was a defect.
(Some discussion then ensued about whether an overload should be added that only accepts rvalue InputIterators to avoid the surprise that issue 1011 sought to address. I make no such attempt, nor do I believe it to be necessary.) Suggested resolution: Back out the resolution of 1011.[Lenexa 2015-05-07: Move to Ready]
Proposed resolution:
This wording is relative to N3797.
Change 25.2 [iterator.synopsis], header <iterator> synopsis, and 25.4.3 [iterator.operations] before p.6 as indicated:
template <classForwardInputIterator>ForwardInputIterator next(ForwardInputIterator x, typename std::iterator_traits<ForwardInputIterator>::difference_type n = 1);