C++ 11 ranged based for statements with pointers

If InputReader is declared in the header file as an array of constant size, then it should work as long as you #include <array> or #include <iterator> or any of several other library headers, so that you get the declarations

template<typename T, std::size_t N> T* std::begin(T (&array)[N]); template<typename T, std::size_t N> T* std::end(T (&array)[N]); 

But what if InputReader is declared something like

extern InputReaderObject* InputReader; 

or maybe

extern InputReaderObject InputReader[]; 

...? It's not obvious from that how many objects are in the array, but let's suppose the same header also has something like:

extern unsigned int InputReaderSize; 

Anything you pass into the range-based for loop needs to have begin and end functions which return iterators. (The functions can be class members, found by argument-dependent lookup, or in namespace std.) The standard library defines some begin and end functions for actual arrays and standard containers, but you can extend it by defining your own:

#include <iterator> struct InputReaderLoopType { InputReaderObject* begin() const { return InputReader; } InputReaderObject* end() const { return InputReader + InputReaderSize; } }; extern const InputReaderLoopType InputReaderLoop; 

would let you do...

for ( InputReaderObject& irb : InputReaderLoop ) 

(Making irb a reference instead of a copy is just a suggestion. You might actually need a copy for some reason.)

You could also define InputReaderObject* begin(InputReaderObject*); and InputReaderObject* end(InputReaderObject*); if you really want the loop to work with InputReader as already declared. But that could cause confusing results if somebody had a pointer of that type which is not in fact InputReader.