c++, visual studio 2010 pointer in list

Question

I have a simple question about pointers in a list.

pointer* Temp2;
Temp->data = 10; //(Temp is one of the elements in a list)

//Now I want to use a pointer to point at this element in order to modify its data.

Temp2=Temp;
Temp2->data = 5;

Will this do the job?

Answer 1

As long as it's not a local pointer, yes, and only because it's a list. If it was a vector for example, the answer would be no, since your pointer would probably point to another element as soon as you modified the vector, while that doesn't happen with a list.

what i mean by local pointer is

_DATA local_data;
pointer *local_p = &local_data;
list.push_back(local_data);

local_p is useless now because it's pointing to the stack, and you need to get a pointer to the heap, which std::list has created for your new element.

for example

pointer *improved_pointer = &*list.begin();

now you can do

pointer *alias = improved_pointer;

and of course, both pointers will work, until you delete the element from your list container, only then it would invalidate your pointers.