To: J3                                                     J3/23-181
From: Brad Richardson
Subject: Generic Iterators and Accessors for F202Y
Date: 2023-June-12

#Reference:

Introduction:
-------------

This paper serves to describe the proposed features for F202Y that
would more fully enable the containers use case for the generics
features.

One of the important use cases for generics was the ability to specify
generic containers. The template feature that has been developed thus
far allows the capability to define derived types with generic
components, thus serving a role of "generic containers." However, an
important aspect of their convenience is the ability to use them in
contexts where one can currently use the "intrinsic container", an
array. The ways in which a "user defined" container could be used like
an array are: 1) iteration over the individual elements of the
container, including by passing to elemental procedures, and 2) accessing
individual elements of the container directly.