Declares or defines operators used by a
For...Next loop with user defined type variables
Syntax
Usage
For iterator [ As typename ] = start_value To end_value [ Step step_value ]
[ ...statements... ]
Next
Parameters
(including arguments)
typename
stp,
step_value
a typename object used as an incremental value
iterator
a typename object used as an iterator
end_value
a typename object used as a loop-terminating value
start_value
a typename object used to copy construct or assign to the iterator initially
Description
Operator For,
Operator Next and
Operator Step can be overloaded in user-defined type definitions to allow objects of that type to be used as iterators and step values in
For...Next loops.
As all non-static member procedures, they have passed a hidden
This parameter that allows to access by reference to the iterator object in the code body of the 3 operators.
Operator For is called once after copy constructing or assigning to the iterator object, and allows the object to perform any additional initialization needed in preparation for the loop.
The first version of
Operator For is used if no step value is given in the
For...Next statement. If a step value is given, the second version is used and is passed the step value because eventual additional initialization may use it.
Advanced usage
The above description seems to imply that the 3 arguments
start_value,
end_value, and
step_value must be of the same type as the
iterator (this is the more obvious use), but it is not quite true:
- The start_value, end_value, and step_value arguments can be of any type (of different types among themselves and also of different types from the one of the iterator).
- The only constraint is that the iterator could be constructed (in case of local iterator) or assigned (in case of global iterator) from the start_value argument (because the iterator is implicitly constructed or assigned under the hood).
- Similarly the other parameters end_value, and step_value must be able to be converted into objects of the same type as the iterator.
Example
Dialect Differences
See also