On Mon, May 2, 2011 at 1:02 PM, Phil Bouchard <philippe@fornux.com> wrote:
On 5/2/2011 12:49 PM, Emil Dotchevski wrote:
Then, what is the benefit of block_ptr compared to using raw pointers as cyclic references? Maybe I'm missing something but aren't they equally (un)safe?
I haven't considered this scenario when block_ptr are explicitly dereferenced in the destructor. Maybe I can add a function that can be called explicitly to check whether the pointee is cyclic and has already been destroyed.
Keep in mind multi-threading issues too. The way the shared_ptr framework deals with this is that weak_ptr::lock() returns a shared_ptr, so if the object hasn't yet expired at the time lock() is called, it can't expire later (since the returned shared_ptr keeps it afloat.) This is what makes using weak_ptr for cyclic references safe. Emil Dotchevski Reverge Studios, Inc. http://www.revergestudios.com/reblog/index.php?n=ReCode