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### 2366. `istreambuf_iterator` end-of-stream equality

Section: 23.6.4 [istreambuf.iterator] Status: New Submitter: Hyman Rosen Opened: 2014-02-19 Last modified: 2014-06-17

Priority: 3

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Discussion:

Given the following code,

>     #include <sstream>

>     std::stringbuf buf;
>     std::istreambuf_iterator<char> begin(&buf);
>     std::istreambuf_iterator<char> end;

it is not clear from the wording of the Standard whether `begin.equal(end)` must be true. In at least one implementation it is not (CC: Sun C++ 5.10 SunOS_sparc Patch 128228-25 2013/02/20) and in at least one implementation it is (gcc version 4.3.2 x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu).

23.6.4 [istreambuf.iterator] says that `end` is an end-of-stream iterator since it was default constructed. It also says that an iterator becomes equal to an end-of-stream iterator when end of stream is reached by `sgetc()` having returned `eof()`. 99 [istreambuf.iterator::equal] says that `equal()` returns true iff both iterators are end of stream or not end of stream. But there seems to be no requirement that `equal` check for end-of-stream by calling `sgetc()`.

Jiahan Zi at BloombergLP discovered this issue through his code failing to work correctly. Dietmar Kühl has opined in a private communication that the iterators should compare equal.

Proposed resolution: