Re: [Boost-users] dereference an iterator

Christian Holmquist wrote:

Sorry for beeing off-topic, but is there a utility in boost for dereferencing an iterator, such as the below (but that also works for boost::reference_wrapper)

template<class Iterator> typename std::iterator_traits<Iterator>::reference deref(Iterator i) { return *i; }

Thanks, Christian

Apart from it looking a little tidier and so perhaps more readable, why would you need this when it works in exactly the same way as unary operator* (and so means more typing)? It might be useful if it had some checks for zero or bad pointers before it did the dereferencing, of course, but can that happen with Boost iterators (I'm not familiar enough with them to know)?