elegant way to erase a node from an iterating list

It is always puzzle me why erasing a stl node inside a loop is so troublesome, example:

for (i = List.begin(); i != List.end(); )

{

temp_i = i; // to prevent the "chain" breaks by the erased node

++i;

List.erase(temp_i);

delete *temp_i;

}

There is a more elegant way to do the similar thing

for (i = List.begin(); i != List.end(); )

{

delete *i;

i = List.erase(i); // return element that followed the last element erased by the function call

}

elegant right?