Re: when to use of auto_ptr ???

From:
Saeed Amrollahi <amrollahi.saeed@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:25:47 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<21289496-64d4-4679-b00b-327f51c8e930@v25g2000yqk.googlegroups.com>
On Oct 11, 9:03 am, Pallav singh <singh.pal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi

Kindly let me know some place where we should use auto_ptr

1. replace pointer class members with their corresponding auto_ptr
objects,

    you fortify your constructors and other function variable
( created on stack ) against resource leaks in the
    presence of exceptions, you eliminate the need to manually
deallocate resources in destructors

Thanks
Pallav Singh


Hi Pallav

std::auto_ptr is a lightweight class which wraps a raw pointer and
offers
the * and -> operators. It is based on exception safety and
Resource Acqusition is Initialization (RAII) technique. If you want to
allocate
a pointer at the begining of a scope and in any case don't worry about
deleting object
in auto_ptr:

  void f()
  {
    int* ip = new int(10); // You have to delete at the end of scope
    auto_ptr<int> ap(new int(10)); // the allocated memory is deleted
at the end of scope
    // ...
    delete ip;
  }

If you forget to write the delete statement or in // ... part an
exception
occured, the memory allocated by ip leaks. For ap everything is OK.
Please note, auto_ptr has its own limitiations. Indeed, the auto_ptr
is not a replacement
for ordinary pointer.

FYI, in C++0x there are various kind of smart pointers: shared_ptr,
weak_ptr and unique_ptr.
They are very sophisticated and betther than auto_ptr.

See the following pages:
   - The C++ Programming Language by Bjarne Stroustrup (section
14.4.2)
   - http://www.research.att.com/~bs/bs_faq2.html#auto_ptr
   - http://www.research.att.com/~bs/C++0xFAQ.html#std-unique_ptr

Regards,
  -- Saeed Amrollahi

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