Get vector of pointers from vector in C++

Question

Is there an easy way of creating a vector of pointers to the elements of a vector?

i.e. easier than the below

std::vector<T*> fn(std::vector<T> &v)
{
  std::vector<T*> r;

  for (int i = 0; i < v.size(); i++)
  {
    r.push_back(&v[i]);
  }

  return r;
}

EDIT: Incoming vector by reference

Answer 1

I see no reason why you would need to do this. If you grow v your pointers may become invalid; and r[i] are just aliases for &v[i].

If you really need to pass pointers (we still did not understand why) you can just pass &v[0] and the size of the vector. Given that all implementation of std::vector must guarantee that elements in a vector are stored contiguously in memory, you can deduce all addresses from the address of the first element and the size of the vector.