Oh STL::list, why doth thou mock me so

[the_real_crispy]

MS implements them as circular linked lists, so ++(list.end()) == list.begin().
Quite unexpected. Sigh....

Comments

[zanate]

jesus wept! You got a doc reference on that, or is this just observed behaviour?

[the_real_crispy]

Observed. The C++ standard is vague on this particular point (so it's implementation specific). So at least with VC++ 2003, you can see this kind of goodness:

std::list listObject;
std::list::const_iterator iter1 = listObject.begin();

listObject.push_back(1);
listObject.push_back(2);
listObject.push_back(3);
listObject.push_back(4);
listObject.push_back(5);

std::advance(iter1, 5);
std::list::difference_type nOffset = std::distance(listObject.begin(), iter1);

nOffset will equal 4. Also confirmed by using the debugger.