boost zip_iterator and std::sort

Question

I have two arrays values and keys both of the same length. I want to sort-by-key the values array using the keys array a

Answer 1

You can't sort a pair of zip_iterators.

Firstly, make_zip_iterator takes a tuple of iterators as input, so you could call:

boost::make_zip_iterator(boost::make_tuple( ... ))

but that won't compile either, because keys and keys+N doesn't have the same type. We need to force keys to become a pointer:

std::sort(boost::make_zip_iterator(boost::make_tuple(+keys, +values)),
          boost::make_zip_iterator(boost::make_tuple(keys+N, values+N)));

this will compile, but the sorted result is still wrong, because a zip_iterator only models a Readable iterator, but std::sort also needs the input to be Writable as described here, so you can't sort using zip_iterator.