David Abrahams wrote:
It's truly amazing how many problems are solved by the existingA number of years ago we used a policy based smart pointer class. Worked really well. Allowed us to easily choose between intrusive and passive ref counts, as well as incorporate thread safe vs non-thread safe versions and easily use the type of smart pointer we needed for the task at hand all with the same interface and familiarity. Not to mention that once we got the basic implementation right, adding new policies was a breeze.
boost::shared_ptr<> design, and it's a big advantage to have a
single-source smart pointer which "just works" in so many ways.
There's so much to learn about what it's capable of that many people
legitimately believe more parameterization would harm
understandability.
We received some resistance from some developers claiming it was too complex. But in my view, if you don't want to look inside, the typedefs are simple enough, just use them. It's just like the rest of the STL that is quite complex, but people use it.
If one fear this, then why would they not fear std::string and std::wstring. Both those represent more complex templates. They each could have been implemented as a class, "simplifying" the implementation. Granted it's not a great analogy, but I don't think a policy based smart pointer is that much different.
David Bradley
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