[boost] iterator_adaptors and shared_ptr

From: George A. Heintzelman (georgeh_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-08-07 13:22:55

There's a claim in the iterator_adaptor documentation 
(http://www.boost.org/libs/utility/indirect_iterator.htm) that "For 
example, [indirect_iterator] makes it possible to view a container of 
pointers or smart-pointers (e.g. std::list<boost::shared_ptr<foo>  >) 
as if it were a container of the pointed-to type."

Has anyone actually ever used an indirect_iterator for this? I am using 
a somewhat old version of boost, so it may be me, but I looked at the 
new code and I can't see differences that fix my problem, which is:

std::iterator_traits< boost::shared_ptr<T> > isn't defined, so the 
indirect_iterator doesn't have a value_type it can latch onto.

Well, it's not hard to fix up a template that does this, if you have 
partial specialization, so I did that, but it doesn't seem like the 
right solution since a shared_ptr isn't really an iterator, it's just 
dereferenceable. Is there a fix (that I'm missing in my inspection of 
the new code) or is this something that ought to be thought about?

George Heintzelman