Iterator Pattern

Kind: pattern

Layer: Design Patterns Core

Aliases: Cursor

Record: architecture:iterator-pattern

Severity: contextual

Scope: behavior, traversal, collection

Canonical: Ontology

A design pattern that lets callers traverse a collection without seeing how it is stored.

Listed in Architecture principles, after Chain of Responsibility Pattern and before Visitor Pattern.

Requires

• Uniform Traversal Interface

Reinforces

• Encapsulation
• Single Responsibility Principle (SRP)

Enables

• Structure-Agnostic Iteration
• Lazy Traversal

Conflicts with

• Exposed Internal Representation

In tension with

• Simplicity

Tensions

• Iterator Pattern / Simplicity

Violated by

• Exposed Internal Representation

Severity

• contextual

Category

• Behavioral Patterns

Refactors

• Space Complexity
• Memory Efficiency
• Single-Pass Processing
• Lazy Evaluation

Linked from

• Core Modular Design
• Scalability / Performance / Optimization
• Streaming / Pipeline / Dataflow Processing
• Behavioral Patterns
• Quality Attributes
• Severity levels
• The resolutions