High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! In computer programming, an iterator is an object that enables a programmer to traverse a container. Various types of iterators are often provided via a container`s interface. Though the interface and semantics of a given iterator are fixed, iterators are often implemented in terms of the structure`s underlying a container implementation and are often tightly coupled to the container to enable the operational semantics of the iterator. Note that an iterator performs traversal and also gives access to data elements in a container, but does not perform iteration (i.e., not without some significant liberty taken with that concept or with trivial use of the terminology). An iterator is behaviorally similar to a database cursor. Iterators date to the CLU programming language in 1974.