Iterator

In computer programming, an iterator is an object that enables a programmer to traverse a container, particularly lists. Various types of iterators are often provided via a container's interface. Though the interface and semantics of a given iterator are fixed, iterators are often implemented in terms of the structures underlying a container implementation and are often tightly coupled to the container to enable the operational semantics of the iterator. Note that an iterator performs traversal and also gives access to data elements in a container, but does not perform iteration (i.e., not without some significant liberty taken with that concept or with trivial use of the terminology). An iterator is behaviorally similar to a database cursor. Iterators date to the CLU programming language in 1974.

Internal iterators are higher order functions (often taking anonymous functions) such as map, reduce etc., implementing the traversal across a container, applying the given function to every element in turn.

An external iterator may be thought of as a type of pointer that has two primary operations: referencing one particular element in the object collection (called element access), and modifying itself so it points to the next element (called element traversal). There must also be a way to create an iterator so it points to some first element as well as some way to determine when the iterator has exhausted all of the elements in the container. Depending on the language and intended use, iterators may also provide additional operations or exhibit different behaviors.

The primary purpose of an iterator is to allow a user to process every element of a container while isolating the user from the internal structure of the container. This allows the container to store elements in any manner it wishes while allowing the user to treat it as if it were a simple sequence or list. An iterator class is usually designed in tight coordination with the corresponding container class. Usually, the container provides the methods for creating iterators.

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