Re: A scoped_ptr class that does not allow NULL ?

From:

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Marcel_M=FCller?= <news.5.maazl@spamgourmet.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Tue, 01 Jun 2010 15:49:05 +0200

Message-ID:

<4c050fd1$0$6875$9b4e6d93@newsspool2.arcor-online.net>

?? Tiib wrote:

On Jun 1, 2:58 pm, Marcel M?ller <news.5.ma...@spamgourmet.com> wrote:

However, I still do not catch what you want to document with the
non-NULL pointer.

But ... his templates name documents that class has a smartpointer
member that can not be NULL because that name tells it in English?

Well this was not my question. I meant with respect to his program. Why
he wants to emphasize the not NULL property?

Whoever is familiar with the C++ language will see that any dereferenced
pointer must not be NULL.

I personally dislike too much goodies like NeverNullScopedPtr because
they make third party code more difficult to service. You never know how
the class NeverNullScopedPtr exactly behaves unless you have analyzed
it. Furthermore the runtime exceptions are not very helpfull since they
require a very good code coverage during testing.

So I would assent to Markus's hint to use references. This has the
additional advantage that if polymorphism is used the compiler will drop
the unnecessary NULL check when transforming pointers in up or down casts.

Marcel