I'm writing an algorithm that iterates over a list of points, calculates the distance between them and inserts additional points if the distance is too great. However I seem to be lacking the proper familiarity with STL to come up with an elegant solution. I'm hoping that I can learn something, so I'll just show you my code. You might have some hints for me. for (std::list<PathPoint>::iterator it = ++points_.begin(); it != points_.end(); it++) { Vector curPos = it->getPosition(); Vector prevPos = (--it)->getPosition(); Vector vecFromPrev = curPos - prevPos; float distance = vecFromPrev.abs(); it++; if (distance > MAX_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_POINTS) { int pointsToInsert = (int)(distance / MAX_DISTANCE_BETWEEN_POINTS); Vector curPos = prevPos; for (int i = 0; i < pointsToInsert; i++) { curPos += vecFromPrev / pointsToInsert; it = points_.insert(it, PathPoint(curPos, false)); it++; } } }