[boost] Re: Cyclic smart pointers (holy grail: the uber-pointer)

From: Chuck Messenger (chuckm_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-05-29 15:46:48

Schoenborn, Oliver wrote:

>>>- You always have A owns A_impl owns B owns B_impl refs A (what your
>>>original code seems to say), in this case B_impl contains an RRef<A> 
>>>instead of a DynObj<A> and everything works
> 
> I'd like to hear whether that's your case or not. 

No.  A and B are completely symmetrical.  They each equally "own" the other.

>>Imagine that I'm supplying a network simulation library.  I have:
>>
>>...(network node code deleted for brevity)...
>>
>>The the problem space is essentially circular.  There's nothing to be 
>>done about it at a design level, in order to make reference 
>>counting work.
> 
> I don't understand why you keep bringing in reference counting, since NoPtr
> does not use it when it comes to ownership, therefore you're talking about a
> problem that does not exist for NoPtr. The application domain is irrelevant:
> if your problem is with ref counting and NoPtr does not use ref counting,
> then you don't have that problem.

I looked at NoPtr, and quickly determined that it didn't implement 
garbage collection, so it couldn't solve my problem.  However, I don't 
understand what NoPtr *does*.

     - Chuck Messenger