Re: Never ever use a raw pointer when a smart pointer can do the same
job
On Aug 18, 6:49 pm, Noah Roberts <roberts.n...@gmail.com> wrote:
James Kanze wrote:
One of the advantages of smart pointers is that you can't
use pointer arithmetic on them:-).
That's only true of a subset of smart pointers. Since all
iterators are smart pointers the count of such that support
(nay, are built for) pointer arithmetic in the standard vastly
outnumber the ones that do not...even C++0x.
Yes. I'm not sure I'd consider that an advantage, however:-).
But my point does hold for some smart pointers, which are only
designed to point to a single object.
You keep this up, and you'll convince me. The problem with raw
pointers for navigation isn't that they don't do everything
that's necessary; it's that they allow the programmer to do even
more. The real problem, I guess, is that in C, pointers are
used for too many different things: they point to an
object---what I understand when I say "pointer"---but they are
also used as surrogates for arrays. And I can't think of a
single case where you'd want both functionalities.
A smart pointer provides some subset of the functionality of
raw pointers and limits and/or extends the interface to
provide for a particular use case.
OK. That's a perfectly valid definition. The one I've
generally heard is that a smart pointer is a class that
implements unary * and ->, but yours is just as valid.
--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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