All I want to do is to check whether an element exists in the vector or not, so I can deal with each case.
if ( item_present )
do_this();
else
do_that(
I've personally used templates of late to handle multiple types of containers at once rather than deal only with vectors. I found a similar example online (can't remember where) so credit goes to whoever I've pilfered this from. This particular pattern seems to handle raw arrays as well.
template ()))>::type>
bool contains(Container && c, T v)
{
return std::find(std::begin(c), std::end(c), v) != std::end(c);
}