Re: [boost] best way to remove duplicates from forwardIterator [startIter, endIter]

Subject: Re: [boost] best way to remove duplicates from forwardIterator [startIter, endIter]
From: David Abrahams (dave_at_[hidden])
Date: 2009-02-24 12:22:55

on Tue Feb 24 2009, Sandeep Gupta <gupta.sandeep-AT-gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>  Given a collection in terms of [startIter, endIter] how can obtain
> [uniqBeginIter, uniqEndIter] that represents unique elements of the
> original container.
> I can always explicitly instantiate a set S of [startIter, endIter]
> and use [S.begin(), S.end()]. Is  it possible to express this in terms
> of algorithms.
>
> Please note that I won't be able to use std::sort as startIter does
> not conform to RandomAccessIterator. Its a forward iterator.

If they are not already arranged so that all the equal elements are
adjacent to one another, your best bet is set<> (or unordered_set<>).

FWIW, It is possible to write a conforming std::sort that works on
forward iterators, but for some reason the standard only requires sort
to work on random access iterators.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
BoostPro Computing
http://www.boostpro.com