C++ Coding Standards: 101 Rules, Guidelines, and Best Practices

81. Prefer range operations to single-element operations

Summary

Don’t use oars when the wind is fair (based on a Latin proverb): When adding elements to sequence containers, prefer to use range operations (e.g., the form of insert that takes a pair of iterators) instead of a series of calls to the single-element form of the operation. Calling the range operation is generally easier to write, easier to read, and more efficient than an explicit loop. (See also Item 84.)

Discussion

The more context you can give a function, the better the chances that it can do something useful with the information. In particular, when you call a single function and pass it a pair of iterators first and last that delimit a range, it can perform optimizations ...