[boost] Re: Proposal: boost::pool fast pointer

From: David B. Held (dheld_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-07-30 18:30:22

"Philippe A. Bouchard" <philippeb_at_[hidden]> wrote in message
news:ai74ji$1g8$1_at_main.gmane.org...
> [...]
> Won't work.  I don't see how shared_ptr<> is better in this situation.

Well, shared_ptr<> "just does the right thing", like it often does. ;)
That's
how it's better.

> My 'hacks' will prevent the user from implicitly doing an error: you'll
> have to explicitly prove you know what you are doing.

Well, when I delete a polymorphic object through a base pointer, I know
what I'm doing; but do you?

> 'Hack' is also relative.  I could say the same thing about & foo
> expressions when there are two overloaded version of the function.
> You now need some compiler hack: (void (*)(int)) & foo.  What about:
> istream & getline(istream &, basic_string &) ?

Resolving ambiguities is entirely different from making liberal use of
reinterpret_cast<>, whose results are not even always defined, or
portable across implementations.  I don't think most people would
hesitate to call a class with a reinterpret_cast in almost every member
function "a hack", especially when other implementations exist that
provide greater functionality with more correctness, safety, and
portability.

Dave