Re: [Boost-users] Rationale for explicit ctors in boost smartpointers

From: Peter Dimov (pdimov_at_[hidden])
Date: 2005-08-28 07:01:33

Matthias Kaeppler wrote:
> Peter Dimov wrote:
>> One reason is that the pointer constructor assumes ownership of the
>> pointer and as such, it imposes the requirement that the pointer has
>> to be delete-able.
> Not sure what you're getting at here. Do you mean, you want to avoid
> statements like:
> coll.insert(NULL); // coll is a collection of smart pointers
> ?

No, it's statements like

coll.insert( &x );
coll.insert( this );
coll.insert( p ); // where p doesn't come from new

that need to be avoided as they would lead to undefined behavior.