At 03:47 PM 1/27/2003, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote: >"Beman Dawes" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message >[EMAIL PROTECTED]">news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]... >> At 04:25 PM 1/24/2003, Jeffrey Yasskin wrote: >> >> >Just out of curiosity, which boost libraries are likely to be proposed >to >> >the committee? >> >> See http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2002/n1397.html > >This is yet another bad PR move, but then I thought, if voicing an opinion >around here constitutes a problem, then the problem is not mine. So here >goes.
It's not a problem at all, so far as I'm concerned. >The smart pointer proposal is unconvincing to me. This, of course, comes at >no surprise. There's some conjecture in the reference document at >http://www.boost.org/libs/smart_ptr/shared_ptr.htm such as "The support for >custom deallocators does not impose significant overhead" or "My opinion is >that the added functionality is worth the cost" etc. Not what one would >like to hear about a one-size-fits-most standard library implementation. What would you like to hear? >On to the FAQ. (I will skip over the first three Q&A with which I totally >disagree.) > >Q.Why doesn't shared_ptr provide a release() function? >A.shared_ptr cannot give away ownership unless it's unique() because the >other copy will still destroy the object. > >The answer doesn't answer the question. The next natural question is, "ok, >but if the pointer is unique(), can I benefit of a release() function that >returns a bool telling me whether the release worked or not?" That's a suggestion worth considering. Perhaps on success release() should return a pointer to the deleter function. >It turns out that in COM the need of relinquishing ownership back to the >system (or another entity) is a common case. Has anyone used shared_ptr >with COM extensively? Yes, but the need never came up. >Q. Why doesn't shared_ptr provide (your pet feature here)? >A. Because (your pet feature here) would mandate a reference counted >implementation or a linked list implementation, or some other specific >implementation. This is not the intent. > >This is a presupposition. Someone wants to mandate lazy >initialization/specific dereference testing/specific initialization >testing/tons others. Would any of these require a refcounted/reflinked >implementation? Probably not, and I agree the answer is inadequate. The honest answer for any given feature would depend on whether it was ever proposed and what came of the proposal. _______________________________________________ Unsubscribe & other changes: http://lists.boost.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/boost
