Custom (readonly) container and iterators ?

[OReubens]

I'm working on writing some classes around a ROM hardware addon card. The classes expose the data on the ROM as a container with iterators, much like a vector or a list.

The classes don't have any data themselves, since all the data is on the ROM.

I'm having some dillemma's as to how to approach/implement the classes. If you were to write somethign like this... Or were using something like this written by someone else.... How would you expect this to be done ?

1)
Make all the member functions static, make a private constructor to prevent making instances.
This works, but may look a bit weird...

   for (auto it = RomTable::begin(); it != RomTable::end(); ++it)

2)
expect users to make a (dummy) instance, then use it as a regular container.
this might be a bit counter intuitive since the class has no datamembers.

3)
create a single instance, expect users to use that everywhere. make the constructor inaccessible.
Some C++ 'purists' might perceive this as global data and thus not a good solution ?

4) Somethign else entirely ?



--

Additionally. Do I need to provide both a const_iterator and an iterator ? There's nothing to be modified, so I'm guessing an iterator isn't needed (?) Or will some STL stuff not work without an iterator ? I'm obviously not fussed about the STL functions that make changes to the container to not work (like sort, fill, swap...)