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| <div class="titlepage"><div><div><h3 class="title"> |
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| <p> |
| A Range is a <span class="bold"><strong><span class="emphasis"><em>concept</em></span></strong></span> |
| similar to the STL <a href="http://www.sgi.com/Technology/STL/Container.html" target="_top">Container</a> |
| concept. A Range provides iterators for accessing a half-open range <code class="computeroutput"><span class="special">[</span><span class="identifier">first</span><span class="special">,</span><span class="identifier">one_past_last</span><span class="special">)</span></code> of elements and provides information about |
| the number of elements in the Range. However, a Range has fewer requirements |
| than a Container. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| The motivation for the Range concept is that there are many useful Container-like |
| types that do not meet the full requirements of Container, and many algorithms |
| that can be written with this reduced set of requirements. In particular, |
| a Range does not necessarily |
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| own the elements that can be accessed through it, |
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| have copy semantics, |
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| <p> |
| Because of the second requirement, a Range object must be passed by (const |
| or non-const) reference in generic code. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| The operations that can be performed on a Range is dependent on the <a href="../../../../../../libs/iterator/doc/new-iter-concepts.html#iterator-traversal-concepts-lib-iterator-traversal" target="_top">traversal |
| category</a> of the underlying iterator type. Therefore the range concepts |
| are named to reflect which traversal category its iterators support. See |
| also terminology and style guidelines. for more information about naming |
| of ranges. |
| </p> |
| <p> |
| The concepts described below specifies associated types as <a href="../../../../../../libs/mpl/doc/refmanual/metafunction.html" target="_top">metafunctions</a> |
| and all functions as free-standing functions to allow for a layer of indirection. |
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| <td align="right"><div class="copyright-footer">Copyright © 2003 -2010 Thorsten Ottosen, Neil Groves<p> |
| Distributed under the Boost Software License, Version 1.0. (See accompanying |
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