Pointers smart pointers or shared pointers

Question

I am programming with normal pointers  but I have heard about libraries like Boost that implement smart pointers  I have also seen that in Ogre3D rendering engine there is a deep use of shared pointers   What exactly is the difference between the three  and should I stick on using just a type of them

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Sydius outlined the types fairly well    Normal pointers are just that - they point to some thing in memory somewhere  Who owns it  Only the comments will let you know  Who frees it  Hopefully the owner at some point  Smart pointers are a blanket term that cover many types  I ll assume you meant scoped pointer which uses the RAII pattern  It is a stack-allocated object that wraps a pointer  when it goes out of scope  it calls delete on the pointer it wraps  It  owns  the contained pointer in that it is in charge of deleteing it at some point  They allow you to get a raw reference to the pointer they wrap for passing to other methods  as well as releasing the pointer  allowing someone else to own it  Copying them does not make sense  Shared pointers is a stack-allocated object that wraps a pointer so that you don t have to know who owns it  When the last shared pointer for an object in memory is destructed  the wrapped pointer will also be deleted    How about when you should use them  You will either make heavy use of scoped pointers or shared pointers  How many threads are running in your application  If the answer is  potentially a lot   shared pointers can turn out to be a performance bottleneck if used everywhere  The reason being that creating copying destructing a shared pointer needs to be an atomic operation  and this can hinder performance if you have many threads running  However  it won t always be the case - only testing will tell you for sure   There is an argument  that I like  against shared pointers - by using them  you are allowing programmers to ignore who owns a pointer  This can lead to tricky situations with circular references  Java will detect these  but shared pointers cannot  or general programmer laziness in a large code base   There are two reasons to use scoped pointers  The first is for simple exception safety and cleanup operations - if you want to guarantee that an object is cleaned up no matter what in the face of exceptions  and you don t want to stack allocate that object  put it in a scoped pointer  If the operation is a success  you can feel free to transfer it over to a shared pointer  but in the meantime save the overhead with a scoped pointer   The other case is when you want clear object ownership  Some teams prefer this  some do not  For instance  a data structure may return pointers to internal objects  Under a scoped pointer  it would return a raw pointer or reference that should be treated as a weak reference - it is an error to access that pointer after the data structure that owns it is destructed  and it is an error to delete it  Under a shared pointer  the owning object can t destruct the internal data it returned if someone still holds a handle on it - this could leave resources open for much longer than necessary  or much worse depending on the code

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the term  smart pointer  includes shared pointers  auto pointers  locking pointers and others  you meant to say auto pointer  more ambiguously known as  owning pointer    not smart pointer   Dumb pointers  T   are never the best solution  They make you do explicit memory management  which is verbose  error prone  and sometimes nigh impossible  But more importantly  they don t signal your intent   Auto pointers delete the pointee at destruction  For arrays  prefer encapsulations like vector and deque  For other objects  there s very rarely a need to store them on the heap - just use locals and object composition  Still the need for auto pointers arises with functions that return heap pointers -- such as factories and polymorphic returns   Shared pointers delete the pointee when the last shared pointer to it is destroyed  This is useful when you want a no-brainer  open-ended storage scheme where expected lifetime and ownership can vary widely depending on the situation  Due to the need to keep an  atomic  counter  they re a bit slower than auto pointers  Some say half in jest that shared pointers are for people who can t design systems -- judge for yourself   For an essential counterpart to shared pointers  look up weak pointers too

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To avoid memory leaks you may use smart pointers whenever you can  There are basically 2 different types of smart pointers in C     Reference counted  e g  boost  shared ptr   std  tr1 shared ptr  non reference counted  e g  boost  scoped ptr   std  auto ptr    The main difference is that reference counted smart pointers can be copied  and used in std   containers  while scoped ptr cannot  Non reference counted pointers have almost no overhead or no overhead at all  Reference counting always introduces some kind of overhead    I suggest to avoid auto ptr  it has some serious flaws if used incorrectly

User · Answer

To avoid memory leaks you may use smart pointers whenever you can  There are basically 2 different types of smart pointers in C     Reference counted  e g  boost  shared ptr   std  tr1 shared ptr  non reference counted  e g  boost  scoped ptr   std  auto ptr    The main difference is that reference counted smart pointers can be copied  and used in std   containers  while scoped ptr cannot  Non reference counted pointers have almost no overhead or no overhead at all  Reference counting always introduces some kind of overhead    I suggest to avoid auto ptr  it has some serious flaws if used incorrectly

User · Answer

the term  smart pointer  includes shared pointers  auto pointers  locking pointers and others  you meant to say auto pointer  more ambiguously known as  owning pointer    not smart pointer   Dumb pointers  T   are never the best solution  They make you do explicit memory management  which is verbose  error prone  and sometimes nigh impossible  But more importantly  they don t signal your intent   Auto pointers delete the pointee at destruction  For arrays  prefer encapsulations like vector and deque  For other objects  there s very rarely a need to store them on the heap - just use locals and object composition  Still the need for auto pointers arises with functions that return heap pointers -- such as factories and polymorphic returns   Shared pointers delete the pointee when the last shared pointer to it is destroyed  This is useful when you want a no-brainer  open-ended storage scheme where expected lifetime and ownership can vary widely depending on the situation  Due to the need to keep an  atomic  counter  they re a bit slower than auto pointers  Some say half in jest that shared pointers are for people who can t design systems -- judge for yourself   For an essential counterpart to shared pointers  look up weak pointers too

User · Answer

To add a small bit to Sydius  answer  smart pointers will often provide a more stable solution by catching many easy to make errors   Raw pointers will have some perfromance advantages and can be more flexible in certain circumstances   You may also be forced to use raw pointers when linking into certain 3rd party libraries

User · Answer

Smart pointers will clean themselves up after they go out of scope  thereby removing fear of most memory leaks    Shared pointers are smart pointers that keep a count of how many instances of the pointer exist  and only clean up the memory when the count reaches zero   In general  only use shared pointers  but be sure to use the correct kind--there is a different one for arrays   They have a lot to do with RAII

User · Answer

To add a small bit to Sydius  answer  smart pointers will often provide a more stable solution by catching many easy to make errors   Raw pointers will have some perfromance advantages and can be more flexible in certain circumstances   You may also be forced to use raw pointers when linking into certain 3rd party libraries

User · Answer

Smart pointers will clean themselves up after they go out of scope  thereby removing fear of most memory leaks    Shared pointers are smart pointers that keep a count of how many instances of the pointer exist  and only clean up the memory when the count reaches zero   In general  only use shared pointers  but be sure to use the correct kind--there is a different one for arrays   They have a lot to do with RAII

User · Answer

To avoid memory leaks you may use smart pointers whenever you can  There are basically 2 different types of smart pointers in C     Reference counted  e g  boost  shared ptr   std  tr1 shared ptr  non reference counted  e g  boost  scoped ptr   std  auto ptr    The main difference is that reference counted smart pointers can be copied  and used in std   containers  while scoped ptr cannot  Non reference counted pointers have almost no overhead or no overhead at all  Reference counting always introduces some kind of overhead    I suggest to avoid auto ptr  it has some serious flaws if used incorrectly

User · Answer

To add a small bit to Sydius  answer  smart pointers will often provide a more stable solution by catching many easy to make errors   Raw pointers will have some perfromance advantages and can be more flexible in certain circumstances   You may also be forced to use raw pointers when linking into certain 3rd party libraries

User · Answer

the term  smart pointer  includes shared pointers  auto pointers  locking pointers and others  you meant to say auto pointer  more ambiguously known as  owning pointer    not smart pointer   Dumb pointers  T   are never the best solution  They make you do explicit memory management  which is verbose  error prone  and sometimes nigh impossible  But more importantly  they don t signal your intent   Auto pointers delete the pointee at destruction  For arrays  prefer encapsulations like vector and deque  For other objects  there s very rarely a need to store them on the heap - just use locals and object composition  Still the need for auto pointers arises with functions that return heap pointers -- such as factories and polymorphic returns   Shared pointers delete the pointee when the last shared pointer to it is destroyed  This is useful when you want a no-brainer  open-ended storage scheme where expected lifetime and ownership can vary widely depending on the situation  Due to the need to keep an  atomic  counter  they re a bit slower than auto pointers  Some say half in jest that shared pointers are for people who can t design systems -- judge for yourself   For an essential counterpart to shared pointers  look up weak pointers too

User · Answer

To add a small bit to Sydius  answer  smart pointers will often provide a more stable solution by catching many easy to make errors   Raw pointers will have some perfromance advantages and can be more flexible in certain circumstances   You may also be forced to use raw pointers when linking into certain 3rd party libraries

User · Answer

Smart pointers will clean themselves up after they go out of scope  thereby removing fear of most memory leaks    Shared pointers are smart pointers that keep a count of how many instances of the pointer exist  and only clean up the memory when the count reaches zero   In general  only use shared pointers  but be sure to use the correct kind--there is a different one for arrays   They have a lot to do with RAII

User · Answer

To avoid memory leaks you may use smart pointers whenever you can  There are basically 2 different types of smart pointers in C     Reference counted  e g  boost  shared ptr   std  tr1 shared ptr  non reference counted  e g  boost  scoped ptr   std  auto ptr    The main difference is that reference counted smart pointers can be copied  and used in std   containers  while scoped ptr cannot  Non reference counted pointers have almost no overhead or no overhead at all  Reference counting always introduces some kind of overhead    I suggest to avoid auto ptr  it has some serious flaws if used incorrectly

User · Answer

the term  smart pointer  includes shared pointers  auto pointers  locking pointers and others  you meant to say auto pointer  more ambiguously known as  owning pointer    not smart pointer   Dumb pointers  T   are never the best solution  They make you do explicit memory management  which is verbose  error prone  and sometimes nigh impossible  But more importantly  they don t signal your intent   Auto pointers delete the pointee at destruction  For arrays  prefer encapsulations like vector and deque  For other objects  there s very rarely a need to store them on the heap - just use locals and object composition  Still the need for auto pointers arises with functions that return heap pointers -- such as factories and polymorphic returns   Shared pointers delete the pointee when the last shared pointer to it is destroyed  This is useful when you want a no-brainer  open-ended storage scheme where expected lifetime and ownership can vary widely depending on the situation  Due to the need to keep an  atomic  counter  they re a bit slower than auto pointers  Some say half in jest that shared pointers are for people who can t design systems -- judge for yourself   For an essential counterpart to shared pointers  look up weak pointers too

User · Answer

Smart pointers will clean themselves up after they go out of scope  thereby removing fear of most memory leaks    Shared pointers are smart pointers that keep a count of how many instances of the pointer exist  and only clean up the memory when the count reaches zero   In general  only use shared pointers  but be sure to use the correct kind--there is a different one for arrays   They have a lot to do with RAII

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