Proposed resolution:

This wording is relative to N4810.

[Drafting Note: Three mutually exclusive options are prepared, depicted below by Option A, Option B, and Option C, respectively.]

Option A

1. NAD, the name BidirectionalIterator actually means that prev requires bidirectional iterators, in which case this change to libcxx is incorrect.

Option B

1. Modify [iterator.synopsis], header <iterator> synopsis, as indicated:

   // [iterator.operations], iterator operations
   […]
   template<class BidirectionalInputIterator>
     constexpr BidirectionalInputIterator prev(BidirectionalInputIterator x,
       typename iterator_traits<BidirectionalInputIterator>::difference_type n = 1);
   

2. Modify [iterator.operations] as indicated:

   template<class BidirectionalInputIterator>
     constexpr BidirectionalInputIterator prev(BidirectionalInputIterator x,
       typename iterator_traits<BidirectionalInputIterator>::difference_type n = 1);
   

   -7- Effects: Equivalent to: advance(x, -n); return x;

Option C

1. The intent of the wording is that the template parameters apply requirements, and the defect is that they do not. We should add a requirement in [iterator.operations]/1 to the effect that the template parameter names impose said requirements.

[ 2024-06-18; Jonathan adds a comment ]

Related to LWG 2353 which made a similar change to `std::next`. Also, if we require a Cpp17BidirectionalIterator here, then that means you can't use `std::prev` on a `std::bidirectional_iterator` unless it also meets the Cpp17BidirectionalIterator requirements. That seems like an unnecessary restriction, since `std::prev` doesn't do anything that wouldn't work fine with any type that models `std::bidirectional_iterator`.

[ 2022-04-22; Jonathan adds a comment ]

P2408 changes the requirements for types substituting BidirectionalIterator etc. in the Algorithms clause. We should consider whether that is appropriate here, especially as algorithms might make use of std::prev internally. An algorithm that was changed by P2408 to accept types that model bidirectional_iterator instead of requiring Cpp17BidirectionalIterator might have to stop using std::prev if we don't resolve this issue to allow it.

We should consider whether distance, advance and next need the same treatment.

[ 2019-06-12 Priority set to 3 after reflector discussion ]

MSVC++ (and apparently libc++) have asserts that std::prev only accepts BidirectionalIterators, because it's declared in the standard as accepting only BidirectionalIterator. libc++ changed their tests (in this commit), apparently from a bug report from Ville and Jonathan, saying that one could theoretically call std::prev with a negative number.

The standardese in [iterator.operations] strongly indicates that prev requires a BidirectionalIterator, but I don't see the usual wording that connects template type parameters of that name to the <algorithm> requirements or similar. So perhaps one could argue that the name Bidirectional there has no meaning. Even if that is the case, that's a defect in the other direction.