Re: It would be better if unique_ptr were a type modifier?

One more point:

Sometimes we use pointers only to hold polymorphic items.

For instance, at the beginning the code was like this:

DoSomething(const FilterBase& ) {...}
{
  const SpecialFilter specialFilter;
  DoSomething(specialFilter);
}
....and then it had to be changed to select the Filter in runtime:

{
  std::auto_ptr<const FilterBase> pFilter =
SelectFilterClass(arguments);
  DoSomething(*pFilter.get());
}

In this case the pointer is not what I want because I don?t need
the address concept or pFilter++ or iterator concept and it cannot be
null.

All I want is a polymorphic object in this scope.

The point is:

Is the unique modifier applicable for references as well?
What is the "smart reference class"?

If we had this, the code would be expressed as:

{
  const unique FilterBase & filter = SelectFilterClass(arguments);
}

Different syntaxes could be:

auto FilterBase & filter = SelectFilterClass(arguments);
delete FilterBase & filter = SelectFilterClass(arguments);

and if could express the idea of
"list of polimorphic items non null"

vector<unique FilterBase& > v;

Everthing is about RAII and the language.

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