Should one prefer STL algorithms over hand-rolled loops?

Question

I seem to be seeing more \'for\' loops over iterators in questions & answers here than I do for_each(), transform(), and the like. Scott Meyers suggests that stl algori

Answer 1

That's really the one thing that Scott Meyers got wrong.

If there is an actual algorithm that matches what you need to do, then of course use the algorithm.

But if all you need to do is loop through a collection and do something to each item, just do the normal loop instead of trying to separate code out into a different functor, that just ends up dicing code up into bits without any real gain.

There are some other options like boost::bind or boost::lambda, but those are really complex template metaprogramming things, they do not work very well with debugging and stepping through the code so they should generally be avoided.

As others have mentioned, this will all change when lambda expressions become a first class citizen.