what does find in the MAP do if no match is found for the key

[NewToCPP]

I checked the microsoft MSDN and it says the following:

"find returns an iterator that addresses the location of an element
with a specified key, or the location succeeding the last element in
the map if no match is found for the key."
What does it mean by the location succeeding the last element.... how
do we know that the element not found in the MAP?

[NewToCPP]

OOPS... incomplete question..
If no match is found for the key, end( ) is returned

I can check if the returned item == m1.end( ) ). If so, item not
found.. otherwise use the returned value...

Is there any other way to find out that the item with the given key is
not found???

NewToCPP wrote:

I checked the microsoft MSDN and it says the following:

"find returns an iterator that addresses the location of an element
with a specified key, or the location succeeding the last element in
the map if no match is found for the key."
What does it mean by the location succeeding the last element.... how
do we know that the element not found in the MAP?

[kwikius]

NewToCPP wrote:

I checked the microsoft MSDN and it says the following:

"find returns an iterator that addresses the location of an element
with a specified key, or the location succeeding the last element in
the map if no match is found for the key."
What does it mean by the location succeeding the last element.... how
do we know that the element not found in the MAP?

IIRC it returns a special iterator representing the end of the map(or
'one past the end' if you prefer)

Just compare the iterator returned:

if (my_map.find(id) == my_map.end()){
std::cout << id <<" not found\n";
}

regards
Andy Little

[kwikius]

NewToCPP wrote:

OOPS... incomplete question..
If no match is found for the key, end( ) is returned

I can check if the returned item == m1.end( ) ). If so, item not
found.. otherwise use the returned value...

Is there any other way to find out that the item with the given key is
not found???

There are other ways, but they all end up at around about the same
place AFAICS... IOW the end(). std::map is meant to be a black box, but
it is usually implemented as a tree. The map sorts all the ids so that
it can find them fast, hence using find() is likely to be the fastest
and best method of finding things in the map..or not as the case may
be. The iterators are usually only useful to enumerate through the map
to see whats in there

hmm .. I love std::map :-)

regards
Andy Little

[Howard]

"NewToCPP" <he****@yahoo.comwrote in message
news:11**********************@79g2000cws.googlegro ups.com...

Please don't top-post. I've re-arranged your messages:

>
NewToCPP wrote:

>I checked the microsoft MSDN and it says the following:

"find returns an iterator that addresses the location of an element
with a specified key, or the location succeeding the last element in
the map if no match is found for the key."
What does it mean by the location succeeding the last element.... how
do we know that the element not found in the MAP?

OOPS... incomplete question..
If no match is found for the key, end( ) is returned

I can check if the returned item == m1.end( ) ). If so, item not
found.. otherwise use the returned value...

Is there any other way to find out that the item with the given key is
not found???

What's wrong with comparing with end()? That's the standard way to tell if
the find failed. Is that not working for you?

-Howard