Because it is not safe to have a pointer to something and not reference count it. See the explanation at http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_47_0/libs/smart_ptr/weak_ptr.htm for a more detailed argument of the same. If you don't want safety in your pointers, then use raw pointers. If you want safety, then you have to accept the consequences... -Tim On 11/10/2011 7:20 PM, Szymon Gatner wrote:
Hi,
Why weak_ptr does not have (smart) pointer semantics? No * or -> or even get().
I often need a pointer type that is a listener to shared_ptr<> (does not affect refcount) but is still usable as a regular pointer type. If providing * and -> operators is for some reason undesirable then just a get() member would be nice as it would allow to implement own wrapper with pointer semantics. get() would return raw pointer from shared counter (so is fast) and not shared_ptr<> as lock() does.