copying an element from list<string>mylist to string mystr - c++

Question

list<string> mylist;
mylist.push_back("random stuff");
list<string>::iterator it;
it=mylist.begin();
string mystr;
//and this doesn't work:
mystr=*it;
Let's say I have a list<string> mylist and it has 3 items. Since I can't work on the characters of each element I must copy what item I want to a simple string or a char buffer. But I can't find a way at all, I've tried with pointers to arrays as well.
So is there a way to copy those items out of the list ?
Edit:
Yeah sorry , revisited my code , the project that is , and found the error to be somewere else, i was copying from listmylist to a string mystr, with the help of an iterator, and i was using a for loop that had the condition to stop when it encountered the character '\0' put when i was copying it, it didn't copy the '\0' in my string so in the end i had to put it manually so the function would not work outside the string
Good code:
string temp;
list<string>::iterator it;
it=mylist.begin();//let's say myslist has "random stuff"
temp=*it;//this does not copy the '\0'
temp+='\0';//so i add it myself
for(int n(0);temp[n]!='\0';n++)//now the for loop stops properly
cout<<temp[n];

Answer 1

If you want characters from the string:
for (std::string::iterator it=mystr.begin(); it!=mystr.end(); it++)
{
char ch = *it;
// do something with the character?
}
If you want to pass the string as a C (zero-terminated) string, use
mystr.c_str()

Answer 2

The code works great and outputs the correct result. Also, you can work with characters of each element like this:
for (list<string>::iterator iter = mylist.begin(); iter != mylist.end(); ++iter)
{
char c = (*iter)[0]; //this is the first character.
}
You can cycle through the string with an iterator too even, strings have them as well :) Though strings support random-access-iterators, so you can just access them as arrays like a c-string as I showed in the for loop.

Answer 3

Are you perhaps looking for
list<string> mylist;
mylist.push_back("random stuff");
list<string>::iterator it = it=mylist.begin();
string& mystr = *it; // Note the &
The type string& is a reference to a string. It introduces a new name for the first element of the list. Well, at least what's currently the first element. You could of course do mylist_push_front("Hi There"); and mystr would still be "random stuff". But if you now say mystr = "Not so random stuff";, you will change the string inside the list.
Note that this is explicitly not a copy.
Small warning: mystr doesn't magically keep the string alive. If you remove the underlying string from the list, you must stop using mystr as well.