Syntax:

    #include <set>
    iterator begin();
    const_iterator begin() const;

The function begin() returns an iterator to the first element of the multiset. begin() should run in constant time.

For example, the following code uses begin() to initialize an iterator that is used to traverse the elements of a multiset:

    multiset<int> ms;
    multiset<int>::iterator iter;
    int i;
 
    for (i = 1; i < 5; i++) {
        ms.insert(i);
        ms.insert(i*i);
        ms.insert(i-1);
    }
 
    cout << "ms is:" ;
    for (iter = ms.begin(); iter != ms.end(); iter++)
        cout << " " << *iter;
    cout << "." << endl;

The above code produces the following output:

ms is: 0 1 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 9 16.

Related Topics: end, rbegin, rend