C++ Primer, Fifth Edition

9.2.3. begin and end Members

The begin and end operations (§ 3.4.1, p. 106) yield iterators that refer to the first and one past the last element in the container. These iterators are most often used to form an iterator range that encompasses all the elements in the container.

As shown in Table 9.2 (p. 330), there are several versions of begin and end: The versions with an r return reverse iterators (which we cover in § 10.4.3 (p. 407)). Those that start with a c return the const version of the related iterator:

list<string> a = {"Milton", "Shakespeare", "Austen"};auto it1 = a.begin();  // list<string>::iteratorauto it2 = a.rbegin(); // list<string>::reverse_iterator ...