Return whether the cards can be rearranged

I solved this question on LeetCode.com:

Alice has a hand of cards, given as an array of integers. Now she wants to rearrange the cards into groups so that each group is size W, and consists of W consecutive cards. Return true if and only if she can. For e.g., for hand=[1,2,3,6,2,3,4,7,8] and W=3, the answer should be true.

as:

class Solution {
public:
bool isNStraightHand(vector<int>& nums, int k) {
if(nums.size()%k!=0) return false;

map<int, int> _m;
for(int num: nums) _m[num]++;

while(_m.size()) {
auto it=_m.begin();
int count=1;
int prev=it->first;
while(count<=k) {
it->second--;
if(count>1 && it->first-prev!=1) return false;
else prev=it->first;
count++;
if(it->second==0) {
auto backupIt=it;
_m.erase(backupIt);     //am I causing UB here?
}
it++;
}
}

return true;
}
};


This works, but it doesn't look like a sturdy solution. I am curious to know if I am causing Undefined Behavior (UB) when erasing the element above. Earlier, I just had _m.erase(it);, but that wasn't good either. I think so, since the official website says:

References and iterators to the erased elements are invalidated.

so, when I do a it++ in the following line, isn't that invalid? That part in particular can probably be improved.

The answer is "yes" it is UB. To fix it just rewrite the part as:

if(it->second==0)
{
it = _m.erase(it);
}
else
{
it++;
}

• @ALX23z, I am not sure it helps. If I don't it++ after erasing the element, I wouldn't be pointing to the next one in the next iteration of the inner while loop. – J. Doe Jun 12 '20 at 1:59
• @J.Doe lookup reference for map::erase en.cppreference.com/w/cpp/container/map/erase it returns following iterator. What I wrote is basically from their example of use of erase. – ALX23z Jun 12 '20 at 7:19
• good point! Thank you! :) – J. Doe Jun 13 '20 at 18:00