std::rotate

template< class ForwardIt >
void rotate( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt n_first, ForwardIt last );

template< class ForwardIt >
ForwardIt rotate( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt n_first, ForwardIt last );

template< class ForwardIt >
constexpr ForwardIt rotate( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt n_first, ForwardIt last );

template< class ExecutionPolicy, class ForwardIt >
ForwardIt rotate( ExecutionPolicy&& policy, 
                  ForwardIt first, ForwardIt n_first, ForwardIt last );

Parameters

Return value

Complexity

Linear in the distance between first and last.

Exceptions

The overload with a template parameter named ExecutionPolicy reports errors as follows:

• If execution of a function invoked as part of the algorithm throws an exception and ExecutionPolicy is one of the standard policies, std::terminate is called. For any other ExecutionPolicy, the behavior is implementation-defined.
• If the algorithm fails to allocate memory, std::bad_alloc is thrown.

Notes

std::rotate has better efficiency on common implementations if ForwardIt statisfies LegacyBidirectionalIterator or (better) LegacyRandomAccessIterator.

Implementations (e.g. MSVC STL) may enable vectorization when the iterator type satisfies LegacyContiguousIterator and swapping its value type calls neither non-trivial special member function nor ADL-found swap.

Possible implementation

See also the implementations in libstdc++, libc++, and MSVC STL.

template<class ForwardIt>
constexpr // since C++20
ForwardIt // void until C++11
rotate(ForwardIt first, ForwardIt n_first, ForwardIt last)
{
   if(first == n_first) return last;
   if(n_first == last) return first;
 
   ForwardIt read      = n_first;
   ForwardIt write     = first;
   ForwardIt next_read = first; // read position for when "read" hits "last"
 
   while(read != last) {
      if(write == next_read) next_read = read; // track where "first" went
      std::iter_swap(write++, read++);
   }
 
   // rotate the remaining sequence into place
   (rotate)(write, next_read, last);
   return write;
}

Example

#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
#include <algorithm>
 
auto print = [](auto const& remark, auto const& v) {
    std::cout << remark;
    for (int n: v)
        std::cout << n << ' ';
    std::cout << '\n';
};
 
int main()
{
    std::vector<int> v{2, 4, 2, 0, 5, 10, 7, 3, 7, 1};
 
    print("before sort:\t\t", v);
 
    // insertion sort
    for (auto i = v.begin(); i != v.end(); ++i) {
        std::rotate(std::upper_bound(v.begin(), i, *i), i, i+1);
    }
 
    print("after sort:\t\t", v);
 
    // simple rotation to the left
    std::rotate(v.begin(), v.begin() + 1, v.end());
 
    print("simple rotate left:\t", v);
 
    // simple rotation to the right
    std::rotate(v.rbegin(), v.rbegin() + 1, v.rend());
 
    print("simple rotate right:\t", v);
}

before sort:            2 4 2 0 5 10 7 3 7 1 
after sort:             0 1 2 2 3 4 5 7 7 10 
simple rotate left:     1 2 2 3 4 5 7 7 10 0 
simple rotate right:    0 1 2 2 3 4 5 7 7 10

See also