Implementing custom STL-like data structures

Question

I have already implemented and tested the data structure and would now like to make it compatible with the collection of STL algorithms. Guidelines for implementing a custom iterator and the like. Specifically:

• What is the minimum set of operations that must be supported? (e.g. ++, +=, ==, !=?)
• Are there any properties of these operations that algorithms expect?

Ideally, these answers would be part of a bigger reference for implementing a STL-compatible data structure, but I'm not sure that such a document exists.

Answer 1

You should consult the SGI STL documentation. It has detailed requirements for each of the STL components, including containers and iterators.

Effectively, for iterators, there are various types--input iterators, output iterators, forward iterators, bidirectional iterators, and random-access iterators. The specification for each algorithm indicates the type of iterator required.