Re: [boost] Re: Performance: shared_ptr

From: Beman Dawes (bdawes_at_[hidden])
Date: 2003-11-17 15:58:03

At 02:49 PM 11/17/2003, Matthew Wilson wrote:

 >> > [As a side question, is it true that Nicolai Josuttis was the
 >> > inventor of the technique?]
 >>
 >> Which specific technique do you have in mind?
 >
 >Not the general principle of having the reference-count external to the
 >counted type, but the specific technique of having it a heap-allocated
 >(integer) instance. That seems, to me anyway, the essence of the
 >shared_ptr,
 >and the bit that's conceptually beautiful (albeit potentially slightly
 >inefficient).

Greg Colvin invented that technique, AFAIK. The template used to be called 
counted_ptr.

See the second page of 
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/1994/N0555.pdf for a paper 
Greg wrote in 1994. I think there was also an earlier paper by him, but I'm 
not able to find a copy.

--Beman