Hello, Is there any interest in a class template which acts like a pointer and guarantees at compile time and at no CPU or memory cost (except when a call to any of its methods is not inlined) that the pointer is not null? One of the applications that I have found for this template is in defensive programming to eliminate the chances that dereferencing a pointer will result in undefined behaviour (when the pointer is null). Using this template is superior to any alternative method (that I know) to achieve the same result, since: (*) it consumes no CPU (in contrast to null checks); (*) the class template instances are copy constructible and copy assignable (in contrast to references which can also be used to guarantee unnullability); (*) it is natively supported by the language and provides a 'real' guarantee (in contrast to 'design by contract'); (*) supports the natural syntax for access to the wrapped resource (in constrast to boost::ref). Regards, Angel Tsankov