Jason House wrote:

I have the contents of a shared pointer getting corrupted by a default constructor of another object. My best guess as to how this could be happening is that I am using references to shared pointers for coding convenience.

Is it possible for code like the following to cause a problem?

{ boost::shared_ptr &x = a.b.c.d.e.f.g; if (x.get() == NULL) { pointer_empty(); } else { other_actions(x->get()); } }

I don't think so, unless other_actions( p ) does delete p. When you #define BOOST_SP_ENABLE_DEBUG_HOOKS in your project and link with libs/smart_ptr/src/sp_debug_hooks.cpp, do you get any assertions?