Re: [boost] [Boost.utility]

Subject: Re: [boost] [Boost.utility]
From: Patrick Horgan (phorgan1_at_[hidden])
Date: 2010-01-26 16:41:21

Jeff Flinn wrote:
> I've always been mystified as to why a singleton instance is accessed 
> via pointer rather than by reference. Singleton models a 
> one-and-only-one relationship a pointer models a zero-or-one 
> relationship. That said, in my experience singletons are generally 
> used as a crutch to access global state.
I use them in a game to access part of the global state from a different 
part.  For example, the part that does random numbers keeps state, and 
for various reasons, given a particular seed must be deterministic, so 
there can be only one.  It's single threaded though.  I store an 
instance as a pointer, but return it from the singlecrutch <grin;> as 
reference.

Patrick