C++17 Quick Syntax Reference: A Pocket Guide to the Language, APIs and Library

© Mikael Olsson 2018

Mikael OlssonC++17 Quick Syntax Referencehttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-3600-0_27

27. Smart Pointers

Mikael Olsson¹ 

(1)

Hammarland, Finland

 

Several smart pointer classes were added in C++11 for managing dynamically allocated memory. By using these container classes, instead of raw pointers, it is no longer necessary to manually delete objects created with the new keyword. This simplifies coding by helping to prevent memory leaks.

Unique Pointer

The first smart pointer that we look at is the unique pointer (std::unique_ptr), which simply acts as a container for a raw pointer. It replaces another deprecated smart pointer named auto_ptr, which was removed in C++17. Consider the following example on how to use a unique pointer. ...