From: guido <guido@0785d39b-7218-0410-832d-ea1e28bc413d>
Date: Tue, 12 Jul 2005 20:57:02 +0000 (+0000)
Subject: Essay on iterators
X-Git-Url: https://gitweb.dealii.org/cgi-bin/gitweb.cgi?a=commitdiff_plain;h=5f08051d4927d4a0e9bd2db533688d028848f858;p=dealii-svn.git

Essay on iterators


git-svn-id: https://svn.dealii.org/trunk@11126 0785d39b-7218-0410-832d-ea1e28bc413d
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+/**
+@page Iterators Iterators on mesh like containers
+
+deal.II has several classes which are understood conceptionally as
+meshes. Apart from the obvious Triangulation, these are DoFHandler and
+MGDoFHandler. All of those define a set of iterators, allowing the
+user to traverse the whole mesh or portions of it. Therefore, they
+have somethings in common. In fact, these iterators are instantiations
+or subclasses of the same class TriaIterator (we do not include
+TriaRawIterator here, since it is only for internal use),
+
+The template signature of TriaIterator is
+@code
+  TriaIterator<dim, Accessor>
+@endcode 
+
+Usually, you will not use this definition directly, but employ one of
+the typedefs below.
+
+@section IteratorsDifferences Distinguishing between iterators
+
+The iterators discussed are all of the form
+@code
+  LoopIterator<dim, Accessor>
+@endcode
+
+Here, <tt>Loop</tt> determines, which cells are reached (or omitted,
+for that matter). This means, independent of the accessor type, this
+part of the definition of the iterator determines the meaning of the
+increment operator.
+
+@subsection IteratorsLoops The action of the iterator itself
+
+All iterators with the same <tt>Loop</tt> and iterating over the
+same kind of geometrical objects traverse the mesh in the same
+order. Take this code example:
+@code
+  Triangulation<dim> tria;
+  DoFHandler<dim>    dof1(tria);
+  DoFHandler<dim>    dof2(tria);
+  ...
+  Trianguation<dim>::active_cell_iterator ti  = tria.begin_active();
+  DoFHandler<dim>::active_cell_iterator   di1 = dof1.begin_active();
+  DoFHandler<dim>::active_cell_iterator   di2 = dof2.begin_active();
+  ...
+  while (ti != tria.end())
+  {
+    do_something_with_iterators(ti, di1, di2);
+    ++ti;
+    ++di1;
+    ++di2;
+  }
+@endcode
+
+Here, all iterators will always point to the same mesh cell, even if
+the DoFHandlers are handling different finite elements. This
+distinction is only in the Accessor.
+
+The standard loops are
+<dl>
+<dt>TriaIterator</tt>
+<dd>Traverse all cells on all levels</dd>
+
+<dt>TriaActiveIterator</tt>
+<dd>Loop over @ref GlossActive "active cells" only</dd> 
+</dl>
+
+@subsection IteratorsAccessors Accessors
+
+We just saw that iterators are not very clever and just know how to
+march through a mesh. Whatever you actually can do with this iterator
+is determined by the Accessor. The magic is, that for any iterator
+<tt>i</tt>, the term <tt>i-&gt;</tt> grants access to <b>all</b>
+attributes of this Accessor.
+
+
+@section IteratorsTypedefs Iterators defined in the containers
+
+The standard iterators are typedefed inside the classes. These are
+
+<table border=1>
+<tr><th></th>
+<th>cell_iterator</th>
+<th>face_iterator</th>
+</table>