Dave Harris wrote:

In-Reply-To: <42778635.20706@boost-consulting.com> eric@boost-consulting.com (Eric Niebler) wrote (abridged):

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* This isn't an algorithm, so I don't want to evoke std::for_each.

What is it that makes std::for_each an algorithm and BOOST_FOREACH not? To me they seem to be doing similar jobs, albeit in different ways.

Is do/while an algorithm? You probably don't think of it that way. It's certainly not an algorithm in the STL sense like std::for_each is. The most effective way to think of BOOST_FOREACH (in my experience) is as a new looping construct -- a foreach keyword. To encourage people to think of it as an algorithm in the STL sense would be a mistake. It is range-based, not iterator-based. You can break and continue and return from the loop body. You can't do any of those things from an STL algorithm. -- Eric Niebler Boost Consulting www.boost-consulting.com