Introduction

On the one hand, iterators are generalizations of pointers which represents positions in a container. On the other hand, they provide powerful iteration and random access in a container.

Iterators are the glue between the generic containers and the generic algorithms of the Standard Template Library.

Iterators support the following operations:

*: Returns the element at the current position.
==, !=: Compares two positions.
=: Assigns a new value to an iterator.

The range-based for-loop uses the iterators implicitly.

Because iterators are not checked, they have the same issues as pointers.