Re: [Boost-users] Rationale for explicit ctors in boost smartpointers

Matthias Kaeppler wrote:

Peter Dimov wrote:

...

One reason is that the pointer constructor assumes ownership of the pointer and as such, it imposes the requirement that the pointer has to be delete-able. Not sure what you're getting at here. Do you mean, you want to avoid statements like:

coll.insert(NULL); // coll is a collection of smart pointers ?

No, it's statements like coll.insert( &x ); coll.insert( this ); coll.insert( p ); // where p doesn't come from new that need to be avoided as they would lead to undefined behavior.