I am looking for a project which is converting c malloc/realloc to shared_ptr. During my Analysis, I found the issue Can anyone provide me some input how to fix below issue typedef boost::shared_ptr<Employee_t> srdpointer; srdpointer ptr((Employee_t*)malloc(sizeof(Employee_t)),std::ptr_fun(free)); I need to pass the shared pointer which will allocate memory Pointed by the ptr. Something like this. void allocateBlocks(int **ptr, int *cnt) { *ptr = (int*)malloc(sizeof(int) * 10); *cnt = 10; /*do something*/ } int main() { int *p = NULL; int count = 0; allocateBlocks(&p, &count); /*do something*/ free(p); } How can I achieve the similar functionality using shared ptr as shown in above code