how to pass a predicate to algorithm - c++

Question

I'm having a problem passing predicate using lambda, I'm trying to move element that matches the predicate to the beginning of a second container, but it didn't seem to work, so what's wrong please?
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <list>
#include <iterator>
#include <utility>
#include <algorithm>
using namespace std;
template <typename iterator, typename Container, typename T>
void move_if(iterator b, iterator e, Container o, T pred)
{
if(pred)
{
o.insert(o.begin(),pred);
}
}
int main()
{
vector<int>v{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10};
vector<int>v2;
for (auto i=v.begin(); i !=v.end(); ++i)
save_if(v.begin(), v.end(), v2, []( vector<int>::iterator i){return (*i>5);});
return 0;
}

Answer 1

Try this...
int main()
{
std::vector<int> v{1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10};
std::vector<int> v2;
std::vector<int>::const_iterator
it = std::remove_copy_if(v.begin(), v.end(),
std::back_inserter(v2),
[](int const& i){return i <= 5;});
v.erase(it, v.end);
return 0;
}
You can read more about remove_copy_if on cppreference.com; it removes elements from the input range and copies them to the output unless the predicate returns true.
Note that this is an STL remove, so you need to call erase afterwards to shrink the input. The semantics of this solution are slightly different to the code you posted, but more similar to your description of what you wanted.

Answer 2

Check this out, I did some modifications on your code:
template <typename iterator, typename Container, typename T>
void move_if(iterator a, iterator b, Container &o, T pred)
{
for (auto i = a; i != b; i++)
{
if (pred(*i))
o.insert(o.begin(), *i);
}
}
int main()
{
vector<int>v{1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10};
vector<int>v2;
move_if(v.begin(), v.end(), v2, [](int i) { return !(i > 5); });
}
Note: As the comments, It's recommended to rename move_if to copy_if, if the functionality is as above code, otherwise you should really move items.

Answer 3

There is no overload of std::vector::insert that takes a predicate as second argument, so this line is wrong:
o.insert(o.begin(),pred);
Furthermore, the predicate needs to be called with an argument,
pred(someArg);
which in your case would be an std::vector<int>::iterator. Also, save_if is not the same as move_if. But more importantly, it isn't clear at all what you are trying to achieve.

Answer 4

In C++11, stateless lambdas like [](){return true} that do not capture anything can be implicitly converted to function pointers. When you do if(pred) you are converting your stateless lambda into a function pointer, checking if that pointer is non-null (it is non-null). This is not what you want to do.
Here is an implementation that moves things between b and e that pred(x) says should be moved:
template <typename iterator, typename Container, typename T>
void move_if(iterator b, iterator e, Container o, T pred)
{
for( auto i = b; i != e;++i) {
if(pred) {
o.insert(o.end(),std::move(*i));
}
}
}
Note that I inserted at o.end(), because the Container you want is probably vector, and inserting at the end() of vector is much faster.
In reality, you probably want to take an output iterator (and by default, use std::back_inserter from a Container) and output your data to that. Similarly, remove_move_if would be a better way to remove, shuffling the elements down the b-e range, and returning an iterator.
Finally, ranged-based algorithms are worth writing. Instead of taking a begin/end iterator pair, take a single object upon which begin(c) and end(c) have been overriden to return begin/end. If you are working on a sub-range, you can pass in a begin/end range of iterators struct with begin/end suitably overridden.