Stefan Strasser <strasser@uni-bremen.de>:

...

Recently I wrote two smart pointer classes, and felt the need for such a

...

...

class. I would like to write such a class, and if everything goes well, perhaps add it to the Boost library.

It is supposed to be something like a more powerful intrusive_ptr? Can you give a usage example?

I think the general idea is that this would be closer to a policy-based smart pointer.

I think it`s neither, but a CRTP class implementing the "pointer concept":

struct my_ptr : smart_ptr_facade<my_ptr,...>{ void set(T *rhs){ ptr=rhs; } T *get() const{ return ptr; } T *ptr; };

=> my_ptr has ptr semantics, including operator->, operator=, ...

iterator_facade simplifies implementing iterators a lot, so could this class for pointers, and other facades, e.g. a vector_facade that implements the std::vector interface in terms of 3 or 4 user-supplied functions.

Yes, this is what I have in mind. In a simplified case, smart_ptr_facade would require from my_ptr to provide a T* get() const;, and smart_ptr_facade would provide operator*, operator->, operator==, operator< (in order to be able to keep my_ptr in std::set).