Immutable container with mutable content

Question

The story begins with something I thought pretty simple :

I need to design a class that will use some STL containers. I need to give users of the class access to an

Answer 1

You need a custom data structure iterator, a wrapper around your private list.

template
class inmutable_list_it {
public:
    inmutable_list_it(std::list* real_list) : real_list_(real_list) {}

    T first() { return *(real_list_->begin()); }

    // Reset Iteration
    void reset() { it_ = real_list_->begin(); }

    // Returns current item 
    T current() { return *it_; } 

    // Returns true if the iterator has a next element.
    bool hasNext(); 

private:
    std::list* real_list_;
    std::list::iterator it_;
};