for loop - How to iterate through a list of objects in C++?

Question

I'm very new to C++ and struggling to figure out how I should iterate through a list of objects and access their members.

I've been trying this where data is a std::list and Student a class.

std::list<Student>::iterator<Student> it;
for (it = data.begin(); it != data.end(); ++it) {
    std::cout<<(*it)->name;
}

and getting the following error:

error: base operand of ‘->’ has non-pointer type ‘Student’

Answer 1

You're close.

std::list<Student>::iterator it;
for (it = data.begin(); it != data.end(); ++it){
    std::cout << it->name;
}

Note that you can define it inside the for loop:

for (std::list<Student>::iterator it = data.begin(); it != data.end(); ++it){
    std::cout << it->name;
}

And if you are using C++11 then you can use a range-based for loop instead:

for (auto const& i : data) {
    std::cout << i.name;
}

Here auto automatically deduces the correct type. You could have written Student const& i instead.