pros and cons of smart pointers

c++ smart-pointers
Ashish picture Ashish · Dec 15, 2009 · Viewed 10.9k times · Source

I came to know that smart pointer is used for resource management and supports RAII.

But what are the corner cases in which smart pointer doesn't seem smart and things to be kept in mind while using it ?

Answer

sharptooth picture sharptooth · Dec 15, 2009

Smart pointers don't help against loops in graph-like structures.

For example, object A holds a smart pointer to object B and object B - back to object A. If you release all pointers to both A and B before disconnection A from B (or B from A) both A and B will hold each other and form a happy memory leak.

Garbage collection could help against that - it could see that both object are unreachable and free them.

Related questions

What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?

What is a smart pointer and when should I use one?

Read More
Example to use shared_ptr?

Hi I asked a question today about How to insert different types of objects in the same vector array and my code in that question was gate* G[1000]; G[0] = new ANDgate() ; G[1] = new ORgate; //gate is a class inherited by …

Read More
Is there any use for unique_ptr with array?

std::unique_ptr has support for arrays, for instance: std::unique_ptr<int[]> p(new int[10]); but is it needed? probably it is more convenient to use std::vector or std::array. Do you find any use for …

Read More