🚀 go-pugleaf

Greg Colvin wrote:

> In article <009A0A5CE1159CC0.49802F14@ittpub.nl> "Wil Evers" <wil@ittpub.nl>:
> >What I definitely do not understand is why the new auto_ptr template
> >doesn't even allow us to query if it is actually owning the object
> >pointed to.

> I found it very hard to contrive examples where is_owner() would
> actually be useful. 

I agree with Greg here: any code that is intended to execute 
differently, depending on the value returned by putative member 
auto_ptr<>::is_owner(), is just bad code.

I can imagine:

  auto_ptr<T> p1;
  auto_ptr<T> p2 = new T;
  if (...) {
     p1 = p2;
  }
  // what to do here?   

The answer is: it's your responsibility to keep track of ownership
of pointers; if you can't do it manually, then automate it with 
reference counting or something.  That's not what auto_ptr<> is for;
its purpose is to make sure that the value "new T" gets destroyed.  
It does that job perfectly; don't ask it to do your job too.

Nathan Myers
ncm@cantrip.org  http://www.cantrip.org/


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