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The main problem I had was that certain member variable weren't accessible. The STL collections don't have that issue so there was no problem.

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Sorry if this is silly question, but why would you need an access to the counter? IMO we should be able to save/load shared_ptr without need to save it.

I checked the code (which was written some time ago) and the answer to that question isn't obvious to me. I do remember starting with the idea that it wouldn't be necessary to look beyond shared_ptr but I had to just keep adding on to make things work. The implementation of shared_ptr is A LOT more involved that one would guess.

My implementation of shared_ptr implementation may not be the only or best one. It is pretty straight forward however in that it follows the chain of composition - which includes shared_count.

Sorry I can't give a better answer.

Robert Ramey

There is another counter to direct counter using (I just think out loud - it may be that you ok): what if I do not save all of the shared_ptr to the same object? What will happened once they will get restored? Wouldn't it cause memory leak? I do realize that any other solution would be more complicated, but I think we should go for it. Gennadiy.