With reasonable typedefs the first loop becomes: for(my_vector_t::const_iterator it = v.cbegin(), end = v.cend(); it != end; ) { ... } and if that looks long,

With reasonable typedefs the first loop becomes: for(my_vector_t::const_iterator it = v.cbegin(), end = v.cend(); it != end; ) { ... } and if that looks long, then the problem is poor choice of type names in STL. I.e if the const_iterator would be citer, then with for(my_vector_t::citer it = v.cbegin(), end = v.cend(); it != end; ) { ... } the need for auto is greatly reduced. Besides, if one just uses indexes, the loop becomes: for(sized_t i = 0; i != v.size(); ) { if (v[i].second > 1 && i % rand() == 0) { v.erase(v.begin() + i); else ++i; } that does not have dangling reference bug from the original loop, easier to follow and with sane compiler one gets the same code. Surely the code only works with vectors, but when one deals with vector of pairs, it implies very specific problem that rather unlikely to change. It also show that the need for auto really comes from the design of STL that leads to very long types that auto mitigates.