enable_shared_from_this - empty internal weak pointer?

c++ boost c++11 shared-ptr smart-pointers
Puppy picture Puppy · Dec 20, 2010 · Viewed 7.8k times · Source

I'm using enable_shared_from_this<Base> and then inherit from Base. When trying to use shared_from_this() in Derived's constructor (not initializer list), I get an exception. Turns out that the internal weak pointer is null and doesn't point to this at all. How can this happen? My other use case of exactly this works perfectly fine. I don't even know where to start. I looked down at the source code of enable_shared_from_this, and it looks to me like that pointer would always be nullptr.

Answer

James McNellis picture James McNellis · Dec 20, 2010

You cannot call shared_from_this() in the object's constructor. shared_from_this() requires that the object is owned by at least one shared_ptr. An object cannot be owned by a shared_ptr before it is constructed.

I would guess that the internal weak pointer is set when a shared_ptr takes ownership of the object for the first time. Before that point, there is no reference count struct that the weak pointer can reference.

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