Range-based for with brace-initializer over non-const values?

I am trying to iterate over a number of std::lists, sorting each of them. This is the naive approach:

#include<list>
using namespace std;
int main(void){
    list<int> a,b,c;
    for(auto& l:{a,b,c}) l.sort();
}

producing

aa.cpp:5:25: error: no matching member function for call to 'sort'
        for(auto& l:{a,b,c}) l.sort();
                             ~~^~~~
/usr/bin/../lib64/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/../../../../include/c++/4.9/bits/stl_list.h:1586:7: note: 
      candidate function not viable: 'this' argument has type 'const
      std::list<int, std::allocator<int> >', but method is not marked const
      sort();
      ^
/usr/bin/../lib64/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.9/../../../../include/c++/4.9/bits/stl_list.h:1596:9: note: 
      candidate function template not viable: requires 1 argument, but 0 were
      provided
        sort(_StrictWeakOrdering);
        ^
1 error generated.

Am I correctly guessing that brace-initializer is creating copy of those lists? And is there a way to not copy them, and make them modifiable inside the loop? (other than making list of pointers to them, which is my current workaround).

Solution

You are guessing correctly. std::initializer_list elements are always const (which makes sort()ing them impossible, as sort() is a non-const member function) and its elements are always copied (which would make sort()-ing them meaningless even if they weren't const). From [dcl.init.list], emphasis mine:

An object of type std::initializer_list<E> is constructed from an initializer list as if the implementation allocated a temporary array of N elements of type const E, where N is the number of elements in the initializer list. Each element of that array is copy-initialized with the corresponding element of the initializer list, and the std::initializer_list<E> object is constructed to refer to that array. [ Note: A constructor or conversion function selected for the copy shall be accessible (Clause 11) in the context of the initializer list. —end note ] If a narrowing conversion is required to initialize any of the elements, the program is ill-formed. [ Example:

struct X {
    X(std::initializer_list<double> v);
};
X x{ 1,2,3 };

The initialization will be implemented in a way roughly equivalent to this:

const double __a[3] = {double{1}, double{2}, double{3}};
X x(std::initializer_list<double>(__a, __a+3));

assuming that the implementation can construct an initializer_list object with a pair of pointers. —end example ]

There is no way to make them non-const or non-copied. The pointer solution works:

for (auto l : {&a, &b, &c}) l->sort();

because it's the pointer that's const, not the element it's pointing to. The other alternative would be to write a variadic function template:

template <typename... Lists>
void sortAll(Lists&&... lists) {
    // before C++17
    using expander = int[];
    expander{0, (void(lists.sort()), 0)...};

    // C++17 or later
    (lists.sort(), ...);
}

sortAll(a, b, c);

You could also, I guess, write a helper to wrap your lists into an array of reference_wrapper to list<int> (since you can't have an array of references), but this is probably more confusing than helpful:

template <typename List, typename... Lists>
std::array<std::reference_wrapper<List>, sizeof...(Lists) + 1>
as_array(List& x, Lists&... xs) {
    return {x, xs...}; 
}

for (list<int>& l : as_array(a, b, c)) {  // can't use auto, that deduces
    l.sort();                             // reference_wrapper<list<int>>,
}                                         // so would need l.get().sort()