std::remove, std::remove_if

 

C++

Language

Standard library headers

Concepts

Utilities library

Strings library

Containers library

Algorithms library

Iterators library

Numerics library

Input/output library

Localizations library

Regular expressions library (C++11)

Atomic operations library (C++11)

Thread support library (C++11)

Technical Specifications

 

Algorithm library

Functions
Non-modifying sequence operations
all_ofany_ofnone_of (C++11)(C++11)(C++11) for_each countcount_if mismatch equal	findfind_iffind_if_not (C++11) find_end find_first_of adjacent_find search search_n
Modifying sequence operations
copycopy_if (C++11) copy_n (C++11) copy_backward move (C++11) move_backward (C++11) fill fill_n transform generate generate_n removeremove_if remove_copyremove_copy_if	replacereplace_if replace_copyreplace_copy_if swap swap_ranges iter_swap reverse reverse_copy rotate rotate_copy random_shuffleshuffle (until C++17)(C++11) unique unique_copy
Partitioning operations
is_partitioned (C++11) partition partition_copy (C++11)	stable_partition partition_point (C++11)
Sorting operations (on sorted ranges)
is_sorted (C++11) is_sorted_until (C++11) sort	partial_sort partial_sort_copy stable_sort nth_element
Binary search operations (on sorted ranges)
lower_bound upper_bound	binary_search equal_range
Set operations (on sorted ranges)
merge inplace_merge includes	set_difference set_intersection set_symmetric_difference set_union
Heap operations
is_heap (C++11) is_heap_until (C++11) make_heap	push_heap pop_heap sort_heap
Minimum/maximum operations
max max_element min min_element minmax (C++11) minmax_element (C++11)	lexicographical_compare is_permutation (C++11) next_permutation prev_permutation
Numeric operations
iota (C++11) accumulate inner_product	adjacent_difference partial_sum
C library
qsort	bsearch

 

Defined in header <algorithm>
template< class ForwardIt, class T > ForwardIt remove( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, const T& value );	(1)
template< class ForwardIt, class UnaryPredicate > ForwardIt remove_if( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, UnaryPredicate p );	(2)

Removes all elements satisfying specific criteria from the range [first, last) and returns a past-the-end iterator for the new end of the range.

The first version removes all elements that are equal to value, the second version removes all elements for which predicate p returns true.

Removing is done by shifting (by means of move assignment) the elements in the range in such a way that the elements that are not to be removed appear in the beginning of the range. Relative order of the elements that remain is preserved and the physical size of the container is unchanged. Iterators pointing to an element between the new logical end and the physical end of the range are still dereferenceable, but the elements themselves have unspecified values (as per MoveAssignable post-condition). A call to remove is typically followed by a call to a container's erase method, which erases the unspecified values and reduces the physical size of the container to match its new logical size.

Parameters

first, last	-	the range of elements to process
value	-	the value of elements to remove
p	-	unary predicate which returns ​true if the element should be removed. The signature of the predicate function should be equivalent to the following:  bool pred(const Type &a); The signature does not need to have const &, but the function must not modify the objects passed to it. The type Type must be such that an object of type ForwardIt can be dereferenced and then implicitly converted to Type. ​
Type requirements
- ForwardIt must meet the requirements of ForwardIterator.
- The type of dereferenced ForwardIt must meet the requirements of MoveAssignable.
- UnaryPredicate must meet the requirements of Predicate.

Return value

Past-the-end iterator for the new range of values (if this is not end, then it points to an unspecified value, and so do iterators to any values between this iterator and end)

Complexity

Exactly std::distance(first, last) applications of the predicate.

Notes

The similarly-named container member functions list::remove, list::remove_if, forward_list::remove, and forward_list::remove_if erase the removed elements.

These algorithms cannot be used with associative containers such as std::set and std::map because ForwardIt does not dereference to a MoveAssignable type (the keys in these containers are not modifiable)

Possible implementation

First version
template< class ForwardIt, class T > ForwardIt remove(ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, const T& value) { first = std::find(first, last, value); if (first != last) for(ForwardIt i = first; ++i != last; ) if (!(*i == value)) *first++ = std::move(*i); return first; }
Second version
template<class ForwardIt, class UnaryPredicate> ForwardIt remove_if(ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, UnaryPredicate p) { first = std::find_if(first, last, p); if (first != last) for(ForwardIt i = first; ++i != last; ) if (!p(*i)) *first++ = std::move(*i); return first; }

Examples

The following code removes all spaces from a string by shifting all non-space characters to the left and then erasing the extra. This is an example of erase-remove idiom.

Run this code

#include <algorithm>
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
#include <cctype>
 
int main()
{
    std::string str1 = "Text with some   spaces";
    str1.erase(std::remove(str1.begin(), str1.end(), ' '),
               str1.end());
    std::cout << str1 << '\n';
 
    std::string str2 = "Text\n with\tsome \t  whitespaces\n\n";
    str2.erase(std::remove_if(str2.begin(), 
                              str2.end(),
                              [](char x){return std::isspace(x);}),
               str2.end());
    std::cout << str2 << '\n';
}

Output:

Textwithsomespaces
Textwithsomewhitespaces

See also

remove_copyremove_copy_if	copies a range of elements omitting those that satisfy specific criteria (function template)
unique	removes consecutive duplicate elements in a range (function template)
std::experimental::parallel::remove (parallelism TS)	parallelized version of std::remove (function template)
std::experimental::parallel::remove_if (parallelism TS)	parallelized version of std::remove_if (function template)