Re: [boost] what happened to allocators in boost?

From: Douglas Gregor (gregod_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-08-05 22:32:01

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "E. Gladyshev" <egladysh_at_[hidden]>
> I am wondering what happened to the allocator idiom in
> boost.  Was it left out intentially?
> I can control all memory allocation details in STL
> (orthogonally to data types) but not in boost.
> It seems like a step backward comparing to STL.
> How can I use allocators with shared_ptr? Is there any
> way to write something like this.
> f()
> {
>    shared_ptr< int, std::allocator<int> > myptr;
>    myptr.allocate();
>    *myptr = 123;
> }

    shared_ptr<int> myptr(new int(123));

?

The allocator design focused on the benefits one could get from specialized
allocators for containers, e.g., data structures that may allocate large
chunks of memory that are expected to be used together. They don't really
give us much for components like shared_ptr that allocate one thing (and
note that shared_ptr does not allocate the pointer it stores, although it
does allocate a reference count). boost::function supports an allocator
argument, but the C++ committee is considering removing this allocator from
the library TR version of function<> for precisely this reason.

    Doug