Erasing elements in std::vector by using indexes

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I've a std::vector<int> and I need to remove all elements at given indexes (the vector usually has high dimensionality). I would like to know, which is the most efficient way to do such an operation having in mind that the order of the original vector should be preserved.

Although, I found related posts on this issue, some of them needed to remove one single element or multiple elements where the remove-erase idiom seemed to be a good solution. In my case, however, I need to delete multiple elements and since I'm using indexes instead of direct values, the remove-erase idiom can't be applied, right? My code is given below and I would like to know if it's possible to do better than that in terms of efficiency?

bool find_element(const vector<int> & vMyVect, int nElem){
    return (std::find(vMyVect.begin(), vMyVect.end(), nElem)!=vMyVect.end()) ? true : false;
}

void remove_elements(){

    srand ( time(NULL) );

    int nSize = 20;
    std::vector<int> vMyValues;
    for(int i = 0; i < nSize; ++i){
            vMyValues.push_back(i);
    }

    int nRandIdx;
    std::vector<int> vMyIndexes;
    for(int i = 0; i < 6; ++i){
        nRandIdx = rand() % nSize;
        vMyIndexes.push_back(nRandIdx);
    }

    std::vector<int> vMyResult;
    for(int i=0; i < (int)vMyValues.size(); i++){
        if(!find_element(vMyIndexes,i)){
            vMyResult.push_back(vMyValues[i]);
        }
    }
}
vector stl algorithm c++
6 Answers

This is an algorithm based on Andriy Tylychko's answer so that this can make it easier and faster to use the answer, without having to pick it apart. It also removes the need to have -1 at the beginning of the indices list and a number of items at the end. Also some debugging code to make sure the indices are valid (sorted and valid index into items).

template <typename Items_it, typename Indices_it>
auto remove_indices(
    Items_it items_begin, Items_it items_end
  , Indices_it indices_begin, Indices_it indices_end
)
{
    static_assert(
      std::is_same_v<std::random_access_iterator_tag
        , typename std::iterator_traits<Items_it>::iterator_category>
      , "Can't remove items this way unless Items_it is a random access iterator");

    size_t indices_size = std::distance(indices_begin, indices_end);
    size_t items_size = std::distance(items_begin, items_end);
    if (indices_size == 0) {
        // Nothing to erase
        return items_end;
    }

    // Debug check to see if the indices are already sorted and are less than
    // size of items.
    assert(indices_begin[0] < items_size);
    assert(std::is_sorted(indices_begin, indices_end));

    auto last = items_begin;
    auto shift = [&last, &items_begin](size_t range_begin, size_t range_end) {
        std::copy(items_begin + range_begin, items_begin + range_end, last);
        last += range_end - range_begin;
    };

    size_t last_index = -1;
    for (size_t i = 0; i != indices_size; ++i) {
        shift(last_index + 1, indices_begin[i]);
        last_index = indices_begin[i];
    }
    shift(last_index + 1, items_size);
    return last;
}

Here is an example of usage:

template <typename T>
std::ostream& operator<<(std::ostream& os, std::vector<T>& v)
{
    for (auto i : v) {
        os << i << " ";
    }
    os << std::endl;
    return os;
}

int main()
{
    using std::begin;
    using std::end;
    std::vector<int> items = { 1, 3, 6, 8, 13, 17 };
    std::vector<int> indices = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 };

    std::cout << items;
    items.erase(
          remove_indices(begin(items), end(items), begin(indices), end(indices))
        , std::end(items)
    );
    std::cout << items;

    return 0;
}

Output:

1 3 6 8 13 17 
17

The headers required are:

#include <iterator>
#include <vector>
#include <iostream> // only needed for output
#include <cassert>
#include <type_traits>

And a Demo can be found on godbolt.org.

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