Safe Pointers

Safe pointers encapsulate various memory management policies. Most safe pointers automatically delete the objects they point to when the pointer itself goes out of scope. Further, most types of safe pointers check to see if it is acceptable to delete referenced objects before calling delete. The specific type of safe pointer you use depends on the memory management policy you want to practice for a particular object or set of objects. For example an alias pointer points to an object, but does not own it and therefore will not delete the object when the pointer goes out of scope. An instance pointer, on the other hand, owns the object it points to and will delete it automatically at the appropriate time. A reference counted pointer shares the object it points to and will only delete it if no other pointers currently refer to the object when the pointer goes out of scope.

After reading this chapter, you will know:

• How to declare and initialize safe pointers
• How to transfer ownership of referenced objects using safe pointers
• How to dereference safe pointers
• How to convert safe pointers to raw C++ pointers
• How to convert raw C++ pointers to safe pointers
• How to select a memory management policy
• The purpose of function naming conventions (copy, create, orphan, and adopt)
• How to manage collections of objects with safe pointers