C++ named requirements: OutputIterator

C++

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Named requirements

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Technical Specifications

C++ named requirements

Basic
DefaultConstructible CopyAssignable CopyConstructible	MoveAssignable (C++11) MoveConstructible (C++11) Destructible
Layout
TrivialType (C++11) TriviallyCopyable (C++11)	StandardLayoutType (C++11) PODType
Library-Wide
EqualityComparable LessThanComparable Swappable (C++11) ValueSwappable (C++11) NullablePointer (C++11) Hash (C++11)	Allocator FunctionObject Callable Predicate BinaryPredicate Compare
Container
Container SequenceContainer ContiguousContainer (C++17) ReversibleContainer	AssociativeContainer AllocatorAwareContainer UnorderedAssociativeContainer (C++11)
Container Elements
DefaultInsertable (C++11) CopyInsertable (C++11) MoveInsertable (C++11)	EmplaceConstructible (C++11) Erasable (C++11)
Iterator
Iterator OutputIterator InputIterator ForwardIterator	BidirectionalIterator RandomAccessIterator ContiguousIterator (C++17) ConstexprIterator (C++20)
Stream I/O
FormattedInputFunction UnformattedInputFunction	FormattedOutputFunction UnformattedOutputFunction
Random Numbers
SeedSequence (C++11) RandomNumberEngine (C++11)	RandomNumberDistribution (C++11) UniformRandomBitGenerator (C++11) RandomNumberEngineAdaptor (C++11)
Concurrency
BasicLockable (C++11) Lockable (C++11) TimedLockable (C++11)	Mutex (C++11) TimedMutex (C++11) SharedMutex (C++17) SharedTimedMutex (C++14)
Other
CharTraits RegexTraits (C++11) BitmaskType NumericType LiteralType (C++11)	UnaryTypeTrait (C++11) BinaryTypeTrait (C++11) TransformationTrait (C++11) Clock (C++11) TrivialClock (C++11)

An OutputIterator is an Iterator that can write to the pointed-to element.

An example of a type that implements OutputIterator is std::ostream_iterator.

When ForwardIterator, BidirectionalIterator, or RandomAccessIterator satisfies the OutputIterator requirements in addition to its own requirements, it is described as mutable.

Requirements

The type X satisfies OutputIterator if

• The type X satisfies Iterator
• X is a class type or a pointer type

And, given

• o, a value of some type that is writable to the output iterator (there may be multiple types that are writable, e.g. if operator= may be a template. There is no notion of value_type as for the input iterators)
• r, an lvalue of type X,

The following expressions must be valid and have their specified effects

Expression	Return	Equivalent expression	Pre-condition	Post-conditions	Notes
*r = o	(not used)		r is dereferencable	r is incrementable	After this operation r is not required to be dereferenceable and any copies of the previous value of r are no longer required to be dereferenceable or incrementable.
++r	X&		r is incrementable	&r == &++r, r is dereferencable or past-the-end	After this operation r is not required to be incrementable and any copies of the previous value of r are no longer required to be dereferenceable or incrementable.
r++	convertible to const X&	X temp = r; ++r; return temp;
*r++ = o	(not used)	*r = o; ++r;

Notes

The only valid use of operator* with an output iterator is on the left of an assignment: operator* may return a proxy object, which defines a member operator= (which may be a template)

Equality and inequality may not be defined for output iterators. Even if an operator== is defined, x == y need not imply ++x == ++y.

Assignment through the same value of an output iterator happens only once: algorithms on output iterators must be single-pass algorithms.

Assignment through an output iterator is expected to alternate with incrementing. Double-increment is undefined behavior (C++ standard currently claims that double increment is supported, contrary to the STL documentation; this is LWG #2035)

Pure output-only iterator is allowed to declare its iterator_traits<X>::value_type, iterator_traits<X>::difference_type, iterator_traits<X>::pointer, and iterator_traits<X>::reference to be void (and iterators such as std::back_insert_iterator do just that).

Standard library

The following standard library iterators are output iterators that are not forward iterators:

• std::ostream_iterator
• std::ostreambuf_iterator
• std::insert_iterator
• std::back_insert_iterator
• std::front_insert_iterator

See also

OutputIterator

specifies that a type is an output iterator for a given value type, that is, values of that type can be written to it and it can be both pre- and post-incremented (concept)

• Iterator library