Quickref.md

Rich-Typed Pointers Quick Reference

Copyright 2013 Julian Gonggrijp

Version 0, alpha 1.

Inclusion and namespace

All types and functions discussed here are in the header rich_typed_ptr.hpp, under the namespace rich_typed_ptr.

Pointer types

Pointers that are immediately initialized with the return value from a function are best declared auto.

weak_ptr<T> acts in most ways like T*, except that it can only copy the value from another rich-typed pointer and that it cannot be deleted.

owner_ptr<T> is similar to weak_ptr<T> but takes unique ownership of the referenced object. It can only be move-constructed from another owner_ptr<T>, usually the return value of a factory function (see below). Assignment is not possible. When it goes out of scope it automatically deallocates the associated object.

data_ptr<T> is like owner_ptr<T>, but can be explicitly initialized with nullptr and can be move-assigned. It should only be used for the implementation of data structures.

Factory functions

make<T>(args...) allocates an object of type T and constructs the object with args..., then returns a pointer to the object.

make_dynamic<Base, Derived>(args...) allocates an object of type Derived and constructs it with args..., then returns a pointer to Base to enable dynamic binding. Requires that Base has a virtual destructor.

Type utilities

weak(ptr) is a convenience cast function that takes any rich-typed pointer ptr to T by const reference and returns a weak_ptr<T> to the same object, where T can be any referenceable type.

ptr_traits<Ptr> is a template metafunction that provides the following member types if Ptr is a rich-typed pointer type:

• value_type is an alias of the object type that Ptr references, e.g. int for owner_ptr<int> and Base for owner_ptr<Base>.
• weak_ptr_t is an alias of weak_ptr<value_type>.