C++ Cookbook

7.2. Removing Objects from a Container

Problem

You want to remove objects from a container.

Solution

Use the container’s erase member function to erase a single element or a range of elements, and possibly use one of the standard algorithms to make the job easier. Example 7-2 shows a couple of different ways to remove elements from a sequence.

Example 7-2. Removing elements from a container

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <list>
#include <algorithm>
#include <functional>
#include "utils.h" // For printContainer(): see 7.10

using namespace std;

int main() {

   list<string> lstStr;

   lstStr.push_back("On");
   lstStr.push_back("a");
   lstStr.push_back("cloudy");
   lstStr.push_back("cloudy");
   lstStr.push_back("day");

   list<string>::iterator p;

   // Find what you want with find
   p = find(lstStr.begin(), lstStr.end(), "day");

   p = lstStr.erase(p); // Now p points to the last element

   // Or, to erase all occurrences of something, use remove
   lstStr.erase(remove(lstStr.begin(), lstStr.end(), "cloudy"),
                lstStr.end());
   printContainer(lstStr); // See 7.10
}

Discussion

Use a container’s erase member function to remove one or more elements from it. All containers have two overloads of erase: one that takes a single iterator argument that points to the element you want to delete, and another that takes two iterators that represent a range of elements you want deleted. To erase a single element, obtain an iterator referring to that element and pass the iterator to erase, as in Example 7-2:

p = find(lstStr.begin(), ...