I've always been mystified as to why a singleton instance is accessed via pointer rather than by reference.
I think that reference access is more reliable than pointer one because references are only aliases but pointers are actual 4 (or 8) bytes objects. Aliases can not be copied but pointers do.
Singleton models a one-and-only-one relationship a pointer models a zero-or-one relationship. That said, in my experience singletons are generally used as a crutch to access global state.
I think that the best way to solve the problem - increase the level of indirection, don't I? Explanation for this should be further. "One-and-only-one" instance is incapsulated inside Singleton class. Singleton class controls access to the instance. How this access is controlled - that is a personal matter of programmer and the task been solving. Global objects are naked instances. For me "global" means "dangerous" but "Singleton" means "flexible" and "safe". -- View this message in context: http://old.nabble.com/-Boost.utility--tp27309940p27323937.html Sent from the Boost - Dev mailing list archive at Nabble.com.