Re: Smart Pointer Issue

From:
James Kanze <james.kanze@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:54:28 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID:
<e0355510-39bd-4199-a74e-38c680f33970@x38g2000yqj.googlegroups.com>
On Feb 12, 1:37 pm, kmakaro...@gmail.com wrote:

Hello, I have the following classes:
class ServiceBase
{
        public:
                ServiceBase() {}
                ~ServiceBase() {}
                void Stop() {}
};

class ServiceDerivate:public ServiceBase
{
        public:
                ServiceDerivate() {}
                ~ServiceDerivate() {}
};

And I have linked smart pointer class which, does not destroy,
but calls Stop method on its destruction:

template <class X> class ServicePtr
{

    [...]

};

Since ServiceBase and ServiceDerivated have to be dynamic
castable i wish I could use a pool of ServiceBase classes, and
upon request to spawn new ServicePtr holding dynamic_cast to
ServiceBase.


I'm not sure I understand. In your example, there are no
virtual functions, so the classes aren't polymorphic. I
presume, however, that this is just an oversight in the example.
And of course, you don't need dynamic_cast to convert from
ServiceDerivate to ServiceBase; that's an implicit conversion.

Sipmle example:

int main()
{
ServicePtr<ServiceBase> sbase;
ServicePtr<ServiceDerivate> sderivate;

sderivate=sbase;

return 0;
}

which, produces:
"no matching function for call to
'ServicePtr<ServiceDerivate>::operator=(ServicePtr<ServiceBase>&)'
note: candidates are: ServicePtr<X>& ServicePtr<X>::operator=(const
ServicePtr<X>&) [with X = ServiceDerivate]


It also doesn't make sense unless sbase actually points to a
ServiceDerivate. If you want to support this, with dynamic
checking, you can add something like the following to your
ServicePtr:

    template< typename T >
    ServicePtr& operator=( ServicePtr< T > const& other )
    {
        X* tmp = dynamic_cast< X* >( other.get() ) ;
        // rest of processing, however...
    }

In this case, I'd probably derive ServicePtr from a non-template
ServicePtrBase which contained and handled the links.
Otherwise, you'll have to make all instances of the template
friends of the other instances. (As it stands,
ServicePtr< ServiceBase > cannot access any of the members of a
ServicePtr< ServiceDerivate >.)

Can anybody help with this. Probably I am missing something.
I tryied to overload:
 ServicePtr& operator=(const ServicePtr<ServiceBase>& r)
but I did not compiled either.


What was the error message? And what did the code look like?

As mentionned above, you're likely to have problems with
accessing private data members; each instantiation of the
template is a separate, unrelated class. Moving the list
handling down to a common, non-template base class should solve
that. (It also has the advantage that you can get it out of the
header files, reducing their size.)

--
James Kanze (GABI Software) email:james.kanze@gmail.com
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