Mathias Gaunard wrote:
Gottlob Frege wrote:
On Thu, Jul 16, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Ross Levine<ross.levine@uky.edu> wrote:
I was wondering if boost has considered a smart pointer that is similar to scoped_ptr but supports deep copy semantics. This would be useful in classes which use the pimpl idiom, as a common way to program these classes is with a scoped_ptr or auto_ptr, but then a copy constructor and copy assignment operator needs to be defined. Herb Sutter worked on an implementation at http://www.gotw.ca/gotw/062.htm, so there's precedent. Is there any interest for this?
You might want to consider copy on write.
Copy on write is nothing more than a possible implementation for the utility he's requesting, and arguably a pretty bad one (it's only useful in the absence of move semantics).
I have the impression that the copy_on_write will not work well together with serialization, but I haven't tried. By this statement I mean that objects that were shared before serialization (saving) "should" also be shared after deserialization (loading). So I have the impression that shared_ptr has a definitive advantage over copy_on_write here. Regards, Thomas