The follow little example illustrates an issue I have with scoped_ptr. I would like to use this to automatically manage destruction of a pointer to and undefined class. It seems that scope_ptr is instantiating its destructor "too early" and complaining about incomplete type for b; In my view, this should not occur as ~a() isn't defined yet. The following example fails on vc 7.1 and gcc 3.2 Note that shared_ptr works as one would hope in this context. Is there anyway to adjust scoped_ptr to work here? Robert Ramey // in my opinion this should not fail to compile under any circumstances. // however it seems that that the inline destructor of scoped_ptr // requires a complete type even though the destructor is not defined. // note: changing scoped_ptr to shared_ptr works as one would hope // note:: changing to auto_ptr still fails in with the same problem #include <boost/scoped_ptr.hpp> struct b; struct a { boost::scoped_ptr<b> pimpl; ~a(); }; int main() { a a_instance; }