C++11 : error: ‘begin’ is not a member of ‘std’

Question

I am trying to do the following operation:

source = new int[10];
dest =  new int[10];
std::copy( std::begin(source), std::end(source), std::begin(dest));

However, the compiler reports the following error.

copy.cpp:5434:14: error: ‘begin’ is not a member of ‘std’
copy.cpp:5434:44: error: ‘end’ is not a member of ‘std’
copy.cpp:5434:72: error: ‘begin’ is not a member of ‘std’

I have included the required <iterator> header in the code. Can anybody help me on this?

Solution 1

Template functions std::begin() and std::end() are not implemented for pointers (pointers do not contain information about the number of elements they refer to) Instead them you should write

std::copy( source, source + 10, dest);

As for the error you should check whether you included header

#include <iterator>

Also maybe your compiler does not support the C++ 2011 Standard.

Solution 2

In addition to include <iterator>in C++11 enabled compiler. You should know begin/end are not useful for pointers, they're useful for arrays:

int source[10];
int dest[10];

std::copy(std::begin(source), std::end(source), std::begin(dest));

Comments

[Vlad from Moscow]

If you would define source and dest as int source[10], dest[10]; then indeed you could use these functions.

[David G]

+1 But if he has access to C++11 features he should be using std::array.

[masoud]

@0x499602D2: Agree, but sometimes a simple [] is not a bad choice for simple projects/codes.