Efficient C++ Performance Programming Techniques

Key Points

Reference counting is not an automatic performance winner. Reference counting, execution speed, and resource conservation form a delicate interaction that must be evaluated carefully if performance is an important consideration. Reference counting may help or hurt performance depending on the usage pattern. The case in favor of reference counting is strengthened by any one of the following items:

• The target object is a large resource consumer

• The resource in question is expensive to allocate and free

• A high degree of sharing; the reference count is likely to be high due to the use of the assignment operator and copy constructor

• The creation or destruction of a reference is relatively cheap

If you reverse these items, you start leaning ...