How to walk through a Stack without destroying it?

[Andrew]

Since stack does not provide iterator interfaces, how to iterate
over it (e.g., print out each element in it for debug purpose) without
changing its structure or copying the whole stack to another stack for such
purpose?

Thanks a lot.

-Andrew

 

[Pete Becker]

Since stack does not provide iterator interfaces, how to iterate
over it (e.g., print out each element in it for debug purpose) without
changing its structure or copying the whole stack to another stack for such
purpose?

If you need operations that aren't supported by a stack don't use a
stack. vector or deque might be what you need.

 

[Jonathan Turkanis]

Since stack does not provide iterator interfaces, how to iterate
over it (e.g., print out each element in it for debug purpose) without
changing its structure or copying the whole stack to another stack for such
purpose?

A stack is just a thin wrapper around another container. The point of
using a stack is to make your code self-documentating --to emphasize
that you don't need to use the other operations supported by the
underlying container. So if this last condition is not satisfied,
there's no reason to use a stack.

Jonathan