Singleton: How should it be used

Question

Edit: From another question I provided an answer that has links to a lot of questions/answers about singletons: More info about singletons here:

So I have read the thread Singletons: good design or a crutch?
And the argument still rages.

I see Singletons as a Design Pattern (good and bad).

The problem with Singleton is not the Pattern but rather the users (sorry everybody). Everybody and their father thinks they can implement one correctly (and from the many interviews I have done, most people can't). Also because everybody thinks they can implement a correct Singleton they abuse the Pattern and use it in situations that are not appropriate (replacing global variables with Singletons!).

So the main questions that need to be answered are:

• When should you use a Singleton
• How do you implement a Singleton correctly

My hope for this article is that we can collect together in a single place (rather than having to google and search multiple sites) an authoritative source of when (and then how) to use a Singleton correctly. Also appropriate would be a list of Anti-Usages and common bad implementations explaining why they fail to work and for good implementations their weaknesses.

---

So get the ball rolling:
I will hold my hand up and say this is what I use but probably has problems.
I like "Scott Myers" handling of the subject in his books "Effective C++"

Good Situations to use Singletons (not many):

• Logging frameworks
• Thread recycling pools

/*
 * C++ Singleton
 * Limitation: Single Threaded Design
 * See: http://www.aristeia.com/Papers/DDJ_Jul_Aug_2004_revised.pdf
 *      For problems associated with locking in multi threaded applications
 *
 * Limitation:
 * If you use this Singleton (A) within a destructor of another Singleton (B)
 * This Singleton (A) must be fully constructed before the constructor of (B)
 * is called.
 */
class MySingleton
{
    private:
        // Private Constructor
        MySingleton();
        // Stop the compiler generating methods of copy the object
        MySingleton(MySingleton const& copy);            // Not Implemented
        MySingleton& operator=(MySingleton const& copy); // Not Implemented

    public:
        static MySingleton& getInstance()
        {
            // The only instance
            // Guaranteed to be lazy initialized
            // Guaranteed that it will be destroyed correctly
            static MySingleton instance;
            return instance;
        }
};

OK. Lets get some criticism and other implementations together.
:-)

Answer 1

Answer:

Use a Singleton if:

• You need to have one and only one object of a type in system

Do not use a Singleton if:

• You want to save memory
• You want to try something new
• You want to show off how much you know
• Because everyone else is doing it (See cargo cult programmer in wikipedia)
• In user interface widgets
• It is supposed to be a cache
• In strings
• In Sessions
• I can go all day long

How to create the best singleton:

• The smaller, the better. I am a minimalist
• Make sure it is thread safe
• Make sure it is never null
• Make sure it is created only once
• Lazy or system initialization? Up to your requirements
• Sometimes the OS or the JVM creates singletons for you (e.g. in Java every class definition is a singleton)
• Provide a destructor or somehow figure out how to dispose resources
• Use little memory