On Mon, Nov 14, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Steven Watanabe <watanabesj@gmail.com> wrote:
AMDG
On 11/13/2011 04:41 PM, Gottlob Frege wrote:
I'm trying to see if I can replace all raw pointers with suitable smart pointers that clearly describe the pointer's lifetime, sharing, etc.
For example, a pointer passed into a function, that is only valid for the lifetime of the function call. A temp_ptr or callstack_ptr or ... some better name.
This sounds a lot like scoped_ptr.
So this pointer would need a copy constructor so it can be passed along into a function (I don't think requiring a ref to the pointer would be good; I'd rather pass by value).
I don't think this is a good idea. You probably don't want the copy constructor to copy the pointee, which means that the destructor doesn't necessarily call delete...
I don't want to call delete in this case. It really is just a dumb pointer. But when I hand it out, I don't want you to keep it. Every pointer in an API has an associated lifetime guarantee - which varies based on the situation, but typically that guarantee is only written in comments. Can it be made part of the code? For the "here is a pointer, it will be invalid at the end of the function call", in debug I could probably track outstanding copies and maybe null out the internal pointer (ie like a weak_ptr) and then assert if they are used beyond their lifetime. Or something like that.
In Christ, Steven Watanabe
Tony