SBS

What is smart pointer? In modern C++ programming, the Standard Library includes smart pointers, which are used to help ensure that programs are free of memory and resource leaks and are exception-safe. A smart pointer is a class template that you declare on the stack, and initialize by using a raw pointer that points to a heap-allocated object. After the smart pointer is initialized, it owns the raw pointer. This means that the smart pointer is responsible for deleting the memory that the raw pointer specifies. The smart pointer destructor contains the call to delete, and because the smart pointer is declared on the stack, its destructor is invoked when the smart pointer goes out of scope, even if an exception is thrown somewhere further up the stack. Access the encapsulated pointer by using the familiar pointer operators, -> and *, which the smart pointer class overloads to return the encapsulated raw pointer. The C++ smart pointer idiom resembles object creation in languages such ...