Difference between std::end(myVector) and myVector.end()

Question

I've noticed there are 2 ways to get the end iterator of a vector (or other container class):

std::end(myVector)

and

myVector.end()

The same goes for various other container iterator functions, begin, cend, cbegin, rend, rbegin, crend, crbegin, find, etc. What I'm wondering is if there's any functional difference between these? And if not, is there some historical reason to have both of them?

(Apologies if this is a duplicate, I've searched all over, and found plenty of sources for one or the other of these methods, but none that mentions both or compares the two.)

Answer 1

There is a historical reason: before C++11, only the member function versions existed. C++11 added the non-members, which also work for plain C-style arrays, so can be considered to be more general.

int a[] = {3, 1, 5, 67, 28, -12};
std::sort(std::begin(a), std::end(a));

When applied to standard library containers, the effect of std::begin and std::end is to call the container's begin() and end() member functions, so there is no functional difference.

C++14 added std::cbegin, std::cend, std::rbegin, std::rend, std::crbegin and std::crend, with similar behaviour.