Why do I have to dereference my vector iterator? What does it mean?

[laserlight]

You answered my question. container<container-type>::iterator is a type of pointer. I had not got to pointers in my book so I stated I was unsure exactly what I was dereferencing.

Actually, this is not generally true. Rather, a pointer is a type of iterator because the concept of an iterator in C++ was generalised from the concept of a pointer. However, a given iterator type could actually be a class type, not a pointer type.