Safe and Easy Dynamic Memory
In the previous section, we learned how dynamic memory could be useful when working with interfaces, especially when creating new instances of derived classes.
We also saw how working with dynamic memory can be hard – we need to make sure to call new and delete in pairs, and failing to do so always has negative effects on our program. Fortunately for us, since C++11, there are tools in the standard library to help us overcome such limitations – smart pointers.
Smart pointers are types that behave like pointers, which are called raw pointers in this context, but have additional functionality.
We are going to look at two smart pointers from the standard library: std::unique_ptr and std::shared_ptr (read as unique pointer and shared pointer). Both pointers are used to free the developer from the complexity of making sure to call delete appropriately.
They represent different ownership models. The owner of an object is the code that determines the lifetime of the object...
