Summary

In C++, memory ownership is really just shorthand for object ownership, which, in turn, is the way to manage arbitrary resources, their ownership, and access. We have reviewed the contemporary idioms that the C++ community has developed to express different types of memory ownership. C++ allows the programmer to express exclusive or shared memory ownership. Just as important is expressing non-ownership in programs that are agnostic about the ownership of resources. We have also learned about the practices and attributes of resource ownership in a well-designed program.

We now have the idiomatic language to clearly express which entity in the program owns each object or resource, and when non-owning access is granted. The next chapter covers the idiom for the simplest operation on resources: the exchange, or swap.