How to implement an STL-style iterator and avoid common pitfalls?

Question

I made a collection for which I want to provide an STL-style, random-access iterator. I was searching around for an example implementation of an iterator but I didn\'t find

Answer 1

I was/am in the same boat as you for different reasons (partly educational, partly constraints). I had to re-write all the containers of the standard library and the containers had to conform to the standard. That means, if I swap out my container with the stl version, the code would work the same. Which also meant that I had to re-write the iterators.

Anyway, I looked at EASTL. Apart from learning a ton about containers that I never learned all this time using the stl containers or through my undergraduate courses. The main reason is that EASTL is more readable than the stl counterpart (I found this is simply because of the lack of all the macros and straight forward coding style). There are some icky things in there (like #ifdefs for exceptions) but nothing to overwhelm you.

As others mentioned, look at cplusplus.com's reference on iterators and containers.