Pointers and Smart Pointers

I love when people imposes the use of smart pointers. Well, if you come from C you know that a pointer is nothing but a memory address. If you come from Java, it's another religion. I like you, but I am on the wild and spice side.

If you are into C++, then you must use smart pointers. Smart pointers are all about resource management. You want to be on the wild but safe side of life. So when you allocate something, you may want to be sure that it will be deallocated at the right time. Talking about sustainability.

It's easy: a smart pointer destructor takes the responsability of freing memory. Now, since the destructor is automatically called by the language when the object goes out of the scope.. you are on the wild but safe side of the life. It's all about RAII.

There are a bunch of smart pointers and you should know them all.

1. std::auto_ptr and boost::scoped_ptr. Here the destructor will actually free the memory for you.
   
2. boost::shared_ptr. Here the destrucor will decrement a reference count and when it gets zero counts then it will free the memory. Very useful if you have a share resource, and you are on the wild and open side.

Another important aspect is that you can transfer the ownership of the allocated object, if the semantic of the pointer allows it. For instance, returning an std::auto_ptr from a function will tranfer the ownership of the object to the caller. Useful, no?