C++ smart pointers

Smart pointers are classes that we can use to get the same functionality as a regular pointer but with an extra feature – the feature being that they take care of their own deletion. In the limited way we have used pointers so far, it has not been a problem for us to delete our own memory, but as your code becomes more complex, and when you are allocating the new memory in one class but using it in another class, it becomes much less clear which class is responsible for deleting the memory when we are done with it. And how can a class or function know whether a different class or function has finished with some allocated memory?

The solution is smart pointers. There are a few types of smart pointer; we will look at the two of the most commonly used ones here. The key to success with smart pointers is using the correct type.

The first type we will consider is shared pointers.

Shared pointers

The way that a shared pointer can safely delete the memory...