on Wed Oct 24 2012, David Hagood <david.hagood-AT-gmail.com> wrote:
If shared_ptr defined a release function:
template <typename T> class shared_ptr { ... void Release(T *t) { delete(t);} } and used Release where it currently deletes the object, then in a case like mine, all you'd have do to is specialize it:
template <> shared_ptr<xmlDoc>::Release(xmlDoc *t) { xmlFreeDoc(t);}
and then all shared_ptr<xmlDoc> would correctly release the object.
That actually wouldn't work. Consider that there's implicit upcasting all the way to shared_ptr<void>
I guess what I can do to avoid the risk would be to derive from shared_ptr and provide the destructor in my ctor.
The best way to do this is to wrap shared_ptr<xmlDoc> construction in a function that creates the necessary deleter. Then, if you own xmlDoc, you can even make its destructor private, which can prevent people from dynamically allocating them any other way. HTH, -- Dave Abrahams BoostPro Computing Software Development Training http://www.boostpro.com Clang/LLVM/EDG Compilers C++ Boost