This is too clever to the point of being painful. (Not to mention, it has a performance penalty for no real benefit.) I think I'd just give up and go home if I

This is too clever to the point of being painful. (Not to mention, it has a performance penalty for no real benefit.) I think I'd just give up and go home if I ever saw this in code I had to maintain. EDIT: Actually, looking more closely, I guess there isn't a performance penalty (I saw back_inserter and assumed it was required for the implementation). That said, I still think it's far too clever.