std::generate_n

 

C++

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Technical Specifications

 

Algorithm library

Execution policies (C++17)
is_execution_policy	sequentialparpar_vec	sequential_execution_policyparallel_execution_policyparallel_vector_execution_policy
Non-modifying sequence operations
all_ofany_ofnone_of (C++11)(C++11)(C++11) for_each for_each_n (C++17)	countcount_if mismatch equal lexicographical_compare	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) transform	fill fill_n generate generate_n swap iter_swap swap_ranges sample (C++17)	removeremove_if replacereplace_if reverse rotate unique random_shuffle (until C++17)	remove_copyremove_copy_if replace_copyreplace_copy_if reverse_copy rotate_copy unique_copy shuffle (C++11)
Operations on uninitialized storage
uninitialized_copy	uninitialized_copy_n	uninitialized_fill	uninitialized_fill_n
Partitioning operations
is_partitioned (C++11) partition_point (C++11)	partition partition_copy (C++11)	stable_partition
Sorting operations
is_sorted (C++11) is_sorted_until (C++11)	sort stable_sort	partial_sort partial_sort_copy	nth_element
Binary search operations
lower_bound	upper_bound	binary_search	equal_range
Set operations (on sorted ranges)
merge inplace_merge	set_difference set_intersection	set_symmetric_difference set_union	includes
Heap operations
is_heap (C++11) is_heap_until (C++11)	make_heap sort_heap	push_heap pop_heap
Minimum/maximum operations
max max_element	min min_element	minmax (C++11) minmax_element (C++11)	clamp (C++17)
Permutations
is_permutation (C++11)	next_permutation	prev_permutation
Numeric operations
iota (C++11) inner_product adjacent_difference	accumulate reduce (C++17) transform_reduce (C++17)	partial_sum inclusive_scan (C++17) exclusive_scan (C++17)	transform_inclusive_scan (C++17) transform_exclusive_scan (C++17)
C library
qsort	bsearch

 

Defined in header <algorithm>
	(1)
template< class OutputIt, class Size, class Generator > void generate_n( OutputIt first, Size count, Generator g );			(until C++11)
template< class OutputIt, class Size, class Generator > OutputIt generate_n( OutputIt first, Size count, Generator g );			(since C++11)
template< class ExecutionPolicy, class OutputIt, class Size, class Generator > OutputIt generate_n( ExecutionPolicy&& policy, OutputIt first, Size count, Generator g );		(2)	(since C++17)

1) Assigns values, generated by given function object g, to the first count elements in the range beginning at first, if count>0. Does nothing otherwise.

2) Same as (1), but executed according to policy. This overload does not participate in overload resolution unless std::is_execution_policy_v<std::decay_t<ExecutionPolicy>> is true

Parameters

first	-	the beginning of the range of elements to generate
count	-	number of the elements to generate
policy	-	the execution policy to use. See execution policy for details.
g	-	generator function object that will be called. The signature of the function should be equivalent to the following: Ret fun(); The type Ret must be such that an object of type OutputIt can be dereferenced and assigned a value of type Ret. ​
Type requirements
- OutputIt must meet the requirements of OutputIterator.

Return value

(none)	(until C++11)
Iterator one past the last element assigned if count>0, first otherwise.	(since C++11)

Complexity

Exactly count invocations of g() and assignments, for count>0.

Exceptions

The overload with a template parameter named ExecutionPolicy reports errors as follows:

• If execution of a function invoked as part of the algorithm throws an exception,

• if policy is std::parallel_vector_execution_policy, std::terminate is called
• if policy is std::sequential_execution_policy or std::parallel_execution_policy, the algorithm exits with an std::exception_list containing all uncaught exceptions. If there was only one uncaught exception, the algorithm may rethrow it without wrapping in std::exception_list. It is unspecified how much work the algorithm will perform before returning after the first exception was encountered.
• if policy is some other type, the behavior is implementation-defined

• If the algorithm fails to allocate memory (either for itself or to construct an std::exception_list when handling a user exception), std::bad_alloc is thrown.

Possible implementation

template< class OutputIt, class Size, class Generator > OutputIt generate_n( OutputIt first, Size count, Generator g ) { for( Size i = 0; i < count; i++ ) { *first++ = g(); } return first; }

Example

The following code fills an array of integers with random numbers.

Run this code

#include <cstddef>
#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <iterator>
#include <algorithm>
 
int main()
{
    const std::size_t N = 5;
    int ar[N];
    std::generate_n(ar, N, std::rand); // Using the C function rand()
 
    std::cout << "ar: ";
    std::copy(ar, ar+N, std::ostream_iterator<int>(std::cout, " "));
    std::cout << "\n";
}

Possible output:

ar: 52894 15984720 41513563 41346135 51451456

See also

fill_n	assigns a value to a number of elements (function template)
generate	saves the result of a function in a range (function template)
std::experimental::parallel::generate_n (parallelism TS)	parallelized version of std::generate_n (function template)