On 23 July 2013 at 14:46, Steve Jaffe wrote: | I agree that STL containers should be used whenever possible and new/delete avoided whenever possible. | | However, there are times when explicit 'new' cannot be avoided (I'm now referring only to C++.) In those cases the best way to avoid the need for explicit memory management is to use an appropriate "smart pointer" such as boost::shared_ptr (std::shared_ptr as of C++11). Then one never has to explicitly call 'delete.'
And sometime you need some manual allocation (we do have that in a few places inside the Rcpp code -- but it also deals with a C API). But we agree: less and less often, and ideally as little as possible. | To clarify, though: what I said originally about NULL pointers applies to both C (malloc/free) and C++ (new/delete). Right, I agree and I once knew that too. I guess my habit just became to assign NULL in order to have a 'flagged' value that can be tested for. And yes, these days compilers are better and more forgiving. Still no excuse to use pointers :) Dirk -- Dirk Eddelbuettel | e...@debian.org | http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com _______________________________________________ Rcpp-devel mailing list Rcpp-devel@lists.r-forge.r-project.org https://lists.r-forge.r-project.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/rcpp-devel
