BALL::BaseIterator< Container, DataType, Position, Traits > Class Template Reference
[Iterators]

#include <BALL/CONCEPT/baseIterator.h>


Public Types
Typedefs.
The names of these typedefs deviate from the usual BALL class names due to restrictions imposed by STL compliance.
typedef DataType	value_type
typedef Position	difference_type
typedef const DataType *	pointer
typedef const DataType &	reference
typedef std::input_iterator_tag	iterator_category
Public Member Functions
Constructors and Destructors
BALL_INLINE	BaseIterator ()
	Default constructor.
BALL_INLINE	BaseIterator (const BaseIterator &iterator)
	Copy constructor.
BALL_INLINE	~BaseIterator ()
	Destructor.
Assignment
BALL_INLINE BaseIterator &	operator= (const BaseIterator &iterator)
BALL_INLINE void	swap (BaseIterator &iterator)
	Swap two iterators.
Accessors
BALL_INLINE void	invalidate ()
	Invalidate the iterator.
BALL_INLINE void	setTraits (const Traits &traits)
	Set the traits.
BALL_INLINE const Traits &	getTraits () const
	Get a constant reference to the traits of this iterator.
BALL_INLINE Traits &	getTraits ()
	Get a constant reference to the traits of this iterator.
BALL_INLINE const Container *	getContainer () const
	Get a constant pointer to the container of this iterator.
Converters
BALL_INLINE	operator const Position & () const
BALL_INLINE reference	operator* () const
	Convert an iterator to its Datatype by returning a reference to the current data.
BALL_INLINE pointer	operator-> () const
	Return a pointer to the current data.
Predicates
BALL_INLINE bool	operator== (const BaseIterator &iterator) const
	Equality operator.
BALL_INLINE bool	operator!= (const BaseIterator &iterator) const
	Inequality operator.
BALL_INLINE bool	isSingular () const
BALL_INLINE bool	isValid () const
BALL_INLINE bool	operator+ () const
	Validity predicate.
BALL_INLINE bool	operator- () const
	Invalidity perdicate.
Protected Member Functions
BALL_INLINE	BaseIterator (const Container &container)
Private Attributes
Traits	traits_
	The instance of the iterator's traits.

Detailed Description

template<typename Container, typename DataType, typename Position, typename Traits>
class BALL::BaseIterator< Container, DataType, Position, Traits >

Generic Iterator Class. This template class implements the basic behaviour of an iterator. Iterators are basically STL-like iterators. They provide the full STL iterator interface, but also offer additional features.

BaseIterator itself is a base class to the other iterator classes only and should not be used by itself.

An important difference exists for the iterators of the kernel objects. For most kernel objects, multiple iterators exist. Therefore, we could not simply use begin() and end() like in STL, but we introduced specialized methods like AtomContainer::beginAtom and AtomContainer::endAtom . For similar reasons, the iterators for kernel classes are not implemented as nested classes of the respective kernel classes, but as independent classes to avoid code replication. An exception is Atom::BondIterator , which is relevant to Atom alone.

Each BALL iterator can be bound to a container, so once the iteration has started, it "knows" about the end() of the container. Therefore, BALL iterators additionally implement the unary plus operator to check for the validity of the iterator. this allows the convenient implementation of for loops, e.g. as follows:

        AtomIterator atom_it = system.beginAtom();
        for (; +atom_it; ++atom_it)
        {
          ....
        }