Re: [boost] Is there any interest in non-owning pointer-like types?

On 2017-02-01 12:02, Olaf van der Spek wrote:

On Wed, Feb 1, 2017 at 11:24 AM, Oswin Krause wrote:

...

For me, the biggest problem of the proposal is that observer_ptr<T> is implicitely constructed from T&. In my code I often use:

Foo a; Bar b(&a);//&a signals that b only references to a, but does not copy it.

Now, when I write

Bar b(a); //so is a now copied?

While the interface is clearer in documentation, the usage is less clear!

IMO using pointers instead of references to indicate something isn't copied is bad practice.. the language is C++, not C.

This is not a C vs C++ thing. But assume it was. How would you indicate that in C++? It should be clear without looking at the reference whether it is okay for a to go out of scope before b or not.