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In which sense is the use of pointers rather than iterators "more convenient"?

In the "lazy programmer" sense. (I did say "admittedly for a fairly weak reason" :-) Usually it is a case of my passing around a pointer that can optionally be NULL, and then discovering during maintenance that I need to have an iterator. In all such cases I've been able refactor the routines to take an iterator, and ultimately been happy with that as the superior solution. However, the "lazy programmer" in me may have chosen iterator_to had it been available. Hmm. Sounds like I just described a good reason *not* to add it. Paul