Re: [boost] Loki SmartPtr questions

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-01-13 11:39:48

At 05:00 AM 1/13/2002, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:

 >> This would not be a major issue for a rarely used function, but I have
 >> found that I tend to make extensive use of 'boost::shared_ptr::get'.
 >
 >I'm not trying to make criticisms based on so little information here, 
but
 >I guess a good design would not need to have access to the underlying raw
 >pointer managed by a smart pointer. I guess operator-> should be heavily
 >used.

That's truest for new designs.  But when interfacing with legacy functions 
(which often take raw pointer arguments), shared_ptr::get() is used much 
more often.

The extreme case occurs when there are so many calls to legacy functions 
taking raw pointers that use of shared_ptr::get() makes the code 
unreadable.  That's when the ability to enable implicit conversion may be 
worthwhile, even though dangerous.

--Beman