Is there a standard C++ equivalent of IEnumerable in C#?

Question

Or is it safe to use vector if the Enumerator of T is just listing all the elements?

Answer 1

IEnumerable is conceptually very different from vector.

The IEnumerable provides forward-only, read-only access to a sequence of objects, regardless of what container (if any) holds the objects. A vector is actually a container itself.

In C++, should you want to provide access to a container without giving the details of this container, the convention is to pass in two iterators representing the beginning and end of the container.

A good example is the C++ STL definition of accumulate, which can be contrasted with IEnumerable.Aggregate

In C++

   int GetProduct(const vector& v)
   {
         // We don't provide the container, but two iterators
         return std::accumulate(v.begin(), v.end(), 1, multiplies());
   }

In C#

  int GetProduct(IEnumerable v)
  {
        v.Aggregate(1, (l, r) => l*r);
  }