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I have written a very simple file managing database that basicly looks like this: class FileDB { public: FileDB(std::string dir) : rootDir(dir) { } void loadFile(std::string filename, File &file) const; void saveFile(std::string filename, const File &file) const; private: std::string rootDir; } Now I would like to iterate through all files contained in the database like using a std::iterator : void iterateFiles() { FileDB filedb("C:\\MyFiles"); for (FileDB::iterator file_it = filedb.begin(); file_it != filedb.end(); ++file_it) { File f = *file_it; // do something with file } } I've read answers to similar questions, some suggesting to derive std::iterator , some to use std::iterator_traits , but I don't really understand how to do that. What can possibly go wrong when trying to implement a custom iterator? And what's a simple yet elegant way to do it? EDIT: Please don't consider using boost, my question is of more conceptual nature. EDIT 2: The FileDB works like this: rootDir foo1 bar1 foo1bar1_1.txt foo1bar1_2.txt bar2 foo1bar2_1.txt foo1bar2_2.txt foo2 fooN barM fooNBarM_x.txt So basicly, I can find a file by its name. As my container is not in memory, I don't have pointers to its data. So my idea was to store the file's path in the iterator. This way, I can implement operator== with a string comparison, as the paths should be unique. The iterator returned from fileDB.end() would be an empty string and operator* would call fileDB::loadFile() with its filepath.

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