Re: [boost] Request for rationale

From: Joseph Gauterin (joseph.gauterin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2007-11-06 06:47:59

> I think the obvious rationale is that while both approaches have their
> merits, you can indeed implement the one based on the other but not vice
> versa.
I agree. I have worked with various APIs which use integer types as
handles and use -1 as the null state. If shared_ptr automatically
ignored handles that compare equal to 0, it wouldn't be usable with
these APIs. I also don't think that it's unreasonable, or even
necessary to justify, that custom deleters should behave like
delete/free.