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### 2267. `partial_sort_copy` underspecified for ranges of two different types

Section: 25.8.2.4 [partial.sort.copy] Status: New Submitter: Matt Austern Opened: 2013-06-26 Last modified: 2016-01-28

Priority: 3

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Discussion:

The signature of this function is:

>     template<class InputIterator, class RandomAccessIterator>
>     RandomAccessIterator
>     partial_sort_copy(InputIterator first, InputIterator last,
>                       RandomAccessIterator result_first,
>                       RandomAccessIterator result_last);

(and the usual overload for an explicitly provided comparison function). The standard says nothing about requirements in the case where the input type (`iterator_traits<InputIterator>::value_type`) and the output type (`iterator_traits<RandomAccessIterator>::value_type`) are different.

Presumably the input type must be convertible to the output type. What's less clear is what the requirements are on the comparison operator. Does the algorithm only perform comparisons on two values of the output type, or does it also perform comparisons on values of the input type, or might it even perform heterogeneous comparisons?

Proposed resolution: