Thinking In C++. Volume 2: Practical Programming

Comparing ranges

These algorithms provide ways to compare two ranges. At first glance, the operations they perform seem close to the search( ) function. However, search( ) tells you where the second sequence appears within the first, and equal( ) and lexicographical_compare( ) simply tell you how two sequences compare. On the other hand, mismatch( ) does tell you where the two sequences go out of sync, but those sequences must be exactly the same length^.

bool equal(InputIterator first1, InputIterator last1, InputIterator first2); bool equal(InputIterator first1, InputIterator last1, InputIterator first2 BinaryPredicate binary_pred);

In both these functions, the first range is the typical one, [first1, last1). The second range starts at first2, but there is no "last2" because its length is determined by the length of the first range. The equal( ) function returns true if both ranges are exactly the same (the same elements in the same order); in the first case, the operator== performs the comparison, and in the second case binary_pred decides if two elements are the same^.

bool lexicographical_compare(InputIterator1 first1, InputIterator1 last1, InputIterator2 first2, InputIterator2 last2); bool lexicographical_compare(InputIterator1 first1, InputIterator1 last1, InputIterator2 first2, InputIterator2 last2, BinaryPredicate binary_pred);

These two functions determine if the first range is "lexicographically less" than the second. (They return true if range 1 is less than range 2, and false otherwise.) Lexicographical comparison, or "dictionary" comparison, means that the comparison is done the same way we establish the order of strings in a dictionary, one element at a time. The first elements determine the result if these elements are different, but if they’re equal, the algorithm moves on to the next elements and looks at those, and so on until it finds a mismatch. At that point, it looks at the elements, and if the element from range 1 is less than the element from range two, lexicographical_compare( ) returns true; otherwise, it returns false. If it gets all the way through one range or the other (the ranges may be different lengths for this algorithm) without finding an inequality, range 1 is not less than range 2, so the function returns false.

If the two ranges are different lengths, a missing element in one range acts as one that "precedes" an element that exists in the other range, so "abc" precedes "abcd". If the algorithm reaches the end of one of the ranges without a mismatch, then the shorter range comes first. In that case, if the shorter range is the first range, the result is true, otherwise it is false^.

In the first version of the function, operator< performs the comparisons, and in the second version, binary_pred is used.

pair mismatch(InputIterator1 first1, InputIterator1 last1, InputIterator2 first2); pair mismatch(InputIterator1 first1, InputIterator1 last1, InputIterator2 first2, BinaryPredicate binary_pred);

As in equal( ), the length of both ranges is exactly the same, so only the first iterator in the second range is necessary, and the length of the first range is used as the length of the second range. Whereas equal( ) just tells you whether the two ranges are the same, mismatch( ) tells you where they begin to differ. To accomplish this, you must be told (1) the element in the first range where the mismatch occurred and (2) the element in the second range where the mismatch occurred. These two iterators are packaged together into a pair object and returned. If no mismatch occurs, the return value is last1 combined with the past-the-end iterator of the second range. The pair template class is a struct with two elements denoted by the member names first and second and is defined in the header^.

As in equal( ), the first function tests for equality using operator== while the second one uses binary_pred.

Example

Because the standard C++ string class is built like a container (it has begin( ) and end( ) member functions that produce objects of type string::iterator), it can be used to conveniently create ranges of characters to test with the STL comparison algorithms. However, note that string has a fairly complete set of native operations, so look at the string class before using the STL algorithms to perform operations.

//: C06:Comparison.cpp

// The STL range comparison algorithms

#include

#include

#include

#include

#include "PrintSequence.h"

using namespace std;

int main() {