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cbegin and cend are added at the beginning of cPP14 , and are not cPP11

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TL;DR, is a more convenient way to obtain constant iterators.
before cPP14, you wanted to get a constant iterator, and the method was more complicated:

typedef vector<MyType> vect;
typedef vect::const_iterator c_iter;
vect v;
// alternatives:
c_iter it = const_cast<vect const &>(v).begin(); // 1
c_iter it = static_cast<c_iter>( v.begin() ); // 2 (explicit)
c_iter it = v.begin(); // 2 (implicit)

it is true that is used in const, but you still need to use it when you use it, such as fold , or its equivalents in cPP. std::accumulate does not need to be modified by the member pointed to by the iterator, so const-qualify is reasonable.

moreover, its implementation is also very simple. It is easy to use the existing facilities and will not break core laungage:

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const_iterator cbegin() const;
const_iterator cend () const;

Finally, it works with other features of cPP0x, such as auto/decltype, and increases its power exponentially, for example, if there is no cbegin, auto, you can only get a non-const version.

the best way to solve this problem is to go to wg21 to see its proposal in 2004, http://www.open-std.org/jtc1/.

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Update:

I'll tell you. Before the release of cPP14, some people complained that there was no const version of std::begin () , and then Uncle Cao took the stage.