operator== in the shared_ptr class

Hi Why does the operator == function in the shared_ptr class compare the pointer values and not what they are pointing to? I'm trying to use the find function (in the stl) and I don't know how to get around this. Here's an example. vector vecStuff; shared_ptr<SomeClass> pkToFind(new SomeClass(x,y,z)); if (find(vecStuff.begin(), vecStuff.end(), pkToFind) != vecStuff.end()) { } This didn't work as expected because the shared_ptr class's operator== function does not use SomeClass's operator == function to do the comparison. Instead it compares the pointer values. I don't understand why they made it like this and I don't think they were dumb enough to overlook this so there must be something I'm missing. Thanks Sashan [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]