Yeah, it makes the for line shorter. We sometimes hoist the end iterator as well, as often g++ can't optimise out the call to .end() each iteration - it can if

Yeah, it makes the for line shorter. We sometimes hoist the end iterator as well, as often g++ can't optimise out the call to .end() each iteration - it can if there's a ref to a const item and you call end() on that const ref, but otherwise, it generally doesn't as it can't guarantee the item hasn't been modified. We're still stuck with CentOS 5.4, so g++ 4.1 for us as that's what we've got to deploy to (although we use ICC for production builds, building off the g++ 4.1 standard headers)... Basically, we want top possible speed - if that means the code's a bit more verbose than it can be, so be it.