Re: [boost] Interesting perspective on shared_ptr

From: gchen (chengang31_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-04-15 01:20:27

Emil Dotchevski wrote:
> In a discussion with Peter Dimov, following thoughts triggered by the recent 
> posts arguing that after a move, shared_ptr should clear px, it occured to 
> me that perhaps shared_ptr<T> could have T px member instead of T * px. 
> Peter correctly pointed out that in that case, the class template would be 
> called "shared", not "shared_ptr".
> 
> Note that I would still be able to say shared<foo *> to get (almost) the 
> same thing as shared_ptr<foo>. There are a few things that need 
> clarification, but overall I don't see drawbacks of shared<foo *> compared 
> to shared_ptr<foo>.
> 
> Peter came up with other potential uses, such as shared<int> which would be 
> implicitly convertible to shared<double>. You can add things like 
> shared<pthread_t>, or shared<HWND>. Speaking of HWND, I already wrote my own 
> win_handle<T>, with partial specialization win_handle<T *> which has a 
> shared_ptr<T> member. All that so I can write win_handle<HWND>, and it only 
> works because HWND happens to be a pointer.
> 

Maybe could add a new shared<T>, but still keep shared_ptr, as a
typedef:

typedef shared<T*> shared_ptr;