[SOLVED] Reuse a QDirIterator

[Hazzl]

I would like to assign a new directory to a QDirIterator that I have allocated in my constructor with an empty directory. I want to do that to avoid having to deal with memory management. I only need one Iterator at a time and would like to repurpose one variable.

[Chris Kawa]

QDirIterator does not expose such api, but I wouldn't worry that much about it. It's a fairly lightweight class. I wouldn't make an instance of it part of your class. Just allocate it on the stack whenever you need it.

[A Former User]

Like @Chris-Kawa said: Create it when you need it. But if you really always want to have a copy around and you're worried about memory management then use a smart pointer:

std::unique_ptr<QDirIterator> m_it; // member variable
// ...
  , m_it( new QDirIterator("") ) // initialize in constructor
// ...
m_it.reset( new QDirIterator("/home", QDirIterator::Subdirectories) );
while (m_it->hasNext()) {
     qDebug() << m_it->next();
}

[Chris Kawa]

@Wieland That's still recreating the iterator every time, just placed in an extra wrapper. It's basically like std::unique_ptr<QString>. There's no point to do it whatsoever.

[A Former User]

@Chris-Kawa The point is that he can reuse the iterator in case he doesn't need to change the path always. But I wouldn't do it.

[Chris Kawa]

This wouldn't reuse the iterator. It is recreated by this m_it.reset( new QDirIterator("/home", QDirIterator::Subdirectories) );. The pointer is the same, but the iterator is a whole new instance. If the path doesn't change it's still better to store it (e.g. in QString) and use a stack based instance with it than to store that pointer and recreate the iterator anyways.

[A Former User]

@Chris-Kawa Yes, of course.

[Hazzl]

Thanks a lot for your pointers (no pun intended :-)