std::remove, std::remove_if

template< class ForwardIt, class T >
ForwardIt remove( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, const T& value );

template< class ForwardIt, class T >
constexpr ForwardIt remove( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, const T& value );

template< class ExecutionPolicy, class ForwardIt, class T >
ForwardIt remove( ExecutionPolicy&& policy,
                  ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, const T& value );

template< class ForwardIt, class UnaryPredicate >
ForwardIt remove_if( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, UnaryPredicate p );

template< class ForwardIt, class UnaryPredicate >
constexpr ForwardIt remove_if( ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last,
                               UnaryPredicate p );

template< class ExecutionPolicy, class ForwardIt, class UnaryPredicate >
ForwardIt remove_if( ExecutionPolicy&& policy,
                     ForwardIt first, ForwardIt last, UnaryPredicate p );

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.

Removing is done by shifting (by means of copy assignment (until C++11)move assignment (since C++11)) 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) (since C++11).

Parameters

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

Given N as std::distance(first, last):

Exceptions

The overloads with a template parameter named ExecutionPolicy report errors as follows:

• If execution of a function invoked as part of the algorithm throws an exception and ExecutionPolicy is one of the standard policies, std::terminate is called. For any other ExecutionPolicy, the behavior is implementation-defined.
• If the algorithm fails to allocate memory, std::bad_alloc is thrown.

Notes

A call to remove is typically followed by a call to a container's erase member function, which erases the unspecified values and reduces the physical size of the container to match its new logical size. These two invocations together constitute a so-called Erase–remove idiom, which can be achieved by the free function std::erase that has overloads for all standard sequence containers, or std::erase_if that has overloads for all standard containers (since C++20).

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 their iterator types do not dereference to MoveAssignable types (the keys in these containers are not modifiable).

The standard library also defines an overload of std::remove in <cstdio>, which takes a const char* and is used to delete files.

Because std::remove takes value by reference, it can have unexpected behavior if it is a reference to an element of the range [first, last).

Possible implementation

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;
}

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;
}

Example

#include <algorithm>
#include <cctype>
#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <string_view>
 
int main()
{
    std::string str1 {"Text with some   spaces"};
 
    auto noSpaceEnd = std::remove(str1.begin(), str1.end(), ' ');
 
    // The spaces are removed from the string only logically.
    // Note, we use view, the original string is still not shrunk:
    std::cout << std::string_view(str1.begin(), noSpaceEnd) 
              << " size: " << str1.size() << '\n';
 
    str1.erase(noSpaceEnd, str1.end());
 
    // The spaces are removed from the string physically.
    std::cout << str1 << " size: " << str1.size() << '\n';
 
    std::string str2 = "Text\n with\tsome \t  whitespaces\n\n";
    str2.erase(std::remove_if(str2.begin(), 
                              str2.end(),
                              [](unsigned char x) { return std::isspace(x); }),
               str2.end());
    std::cout << str2 << '\n';
}

Textwithsomespaces size: 23
Textwithsomespaces size: 18
Textwithsomewhitespaces

Defect reports

The following behavior-changing defect reports were applied retroactively to previously published C++ standards.

See also