this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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The Myth of Smart Pointers (www.logikalsolutions.com)
submitted 11 months ago by lysdexic@programming.dev to c/cpp@programming.dev
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[–] vzq@lemmy.blahaj.zone 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I’ve been using unique_ptr since way before it was called that, and it’s not something magical. You need to know what it does and what it doesn’t or you’ll be surprised.

I always thought of unique as a warning not a guarantee. Make sure it’s the only thing pointing at your structure, or you’ll be in trouble.

[–] lysdexic@programming.dev 1 points 11 months ago

You need to know what it does and what it doesn’t or you’ll be surprised.

I don't think that std::unique_ptr is shrouded in mystery: it's designed to be the unique handle of a raw pointer, and it frees the memory when it's lifetime ends. As it's designed to be the unique holder of a resource, it's implemented to disallow making copies. It might be implemented in clever ways, but a developer experience point of view it's quite straight to the point.