Re: Thoughts on Socket (was: New file uploaded to boost)

From: William Kempf (sirwillard_at_[hidden])
Date: 2001-01-03 11:26:23

--- In boost_at_[hidden], Bill Klein <bill_at_o...> wrote:
> 
> >> It depends what you mean by "overkill", I guess. The suggestions 
eliminate
> >> casting, some exception-safety issues, and probably the need to 
write a
> >> destructor in your class. Sounds like simplification to me. 
What's the
> >> downside?
> 
> Bill Kempf wrote...
> >For the "Pimpl Idiom" I prefer to use code like this:
> >
> >class my_class
> >{
> >   ...
> >private:
> >   class impl; // scope it in the class to prevent name clashes
> >   impl* pimpl;
> >};
> >
> >This requires code in my_class to manage the lifetime of the impl 
> >instance, but this is trivial and impacts only the implementation 
of 
> >my_class, while making visibility of the destructor a non-issue...
> 
> Err... it forces you to write a non-inline destructor for my_class
> to delete pimpl... In what way is this better than having scoped_ptr
> force you to write a non-inline destructor which may be empty (if
> you don't have anything to do there)?

It's not better, just more obvious.  Many coders (as evidenced by 
these threads) are confused about how to make scoped_ptr<> work in 
cases like this.  It's not obvious that a non-inlined destructor is 
required.

The big draw back is in the compile time dependencies, though.

Bill Kempf