Re: [boost] Re: [boost] Curaçao: reaction to smart pointer proposal

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-04-30 15:08:21

At 02:53 PM 4/30/2002, Greg Colvin wrote:

 >At 12:41 PM 04/28/2002, Beman wrote:
 >
 >>* LWG members are very concerned that "you don't have to pay for what 
you
 >don't use." This is particularly true of memory; increased memory use due
 >to multiple inheritance or to accommodate weak_ptr, for example, is 
viewed
 >as a serious problem.
 >
 >I don't really think that is such a big issue, unless shared objects
 >are hardly shared at all, and maybe not even then.
 >
 >The overhead for the weak pointer need be only one word per object, not
 >per pointer, and the smart pointer itself need be only one or two words.

Well, the issue could be put to rest by providing sizeof() information for 
a number of compilers.  Test code should probably report sizeof() 
routinely, since it is something that people do care about.

It isn't so much a concern for single smart pointers, but when you have a 
vector of smart pointers, sizeof() each smart pointer gets important.

--Beman