Accessing Iterator as private member of a class

[Bnchs400]

My question is how can I access an iterator that is a private member of a class?

class Sequence
{
  friend ostream& operator<<(ostream& OUTPUT, const Sequence & s);
  
  public:
   
    ...

  private:
  list <int> intList;
  list <int> :: iterator ListIt;
}

...

ostream& operator<<(ostream& OUTPUT, const Sequence&  s)
{
  for(ListIt=s.intList.begin(); ListIt != intList.end(); ListIt++)
 {
  cout << *ListIt;
 }
 return OUTPUT;
}

I have tried the above, and several other ways and I keep getting a compilier error that ListIt is undeclared. Thanks.

[laserlight]

Use Sequence::ListIt instead of ListIt. Oh, and you need to name your iterator in the loop and dereference it.

[CornedBee]

And use ++it instead of it++.

[matsp]

Whilst including an iterator in a class may be a good idea at some times, it serves no purpose in this instance - class members should be "the minimum necessary to get the work done".

Having unnecessary class members causes two problems:
1. class bloat - each class instance will take up extra space everywhere it's being stored, copied, etc.
2. It "dirties the class", meaning that the class implementation is no longer "clean" or "neat". You are mixing in stuff that is "related, but not part of the object you are dealing with".

Unless I've completely misunderstood something, you should be able to use "ListIt" as a local variable inside your operator<< function, and there's no need to have it inside the class.

A case where you may need to use this would be if you for some reason need to walk the list of elements as one step at a time, e.g:

class Sequence
{
  public:
...
  int getFirstElement() { ListIt = s.intList.begin(); return *ListIt; };
  int getNextElement() { if (++ListIt == s.intList.end() return 0; else return *ListIt; };
...
  private:
  list <int> intList;
  list <int> :: iterator ListIt;
};

--
Mats