Thread: Is shared_ptr dangerous?

Originally Posted by CornedBee

The commonly accepted definition of detach() is that it is a function that makes the smart pointer stop managing the memory it points to. In other words, it means, "give me the raw pointer and set yourself to NULL".
In std::auto_ptr, this function is called release().

If the above is not what Elysia meant by Detach(), we've wasted a lot of typing ...

Yes, that's what it means. I wanted to release the smart pointer its duty to manage to memory and give it to be under a certain circumstance. ATL's CComPtr, for example, supports this.

Releases ownership of a pointer, sets the CComPtrBase::p data member variable to NULL, and returns a copy of the pointer.

That's why CComPtr::Detach does. I can't remember more details right now. It's just from the documentation.
But it should guarantee that it returns the pointer and does not Release it beforehand (which shared_ptr would do).

CComPtr has the advantage that the reference counting of COM objects is internal and publicly documented. If a shared_ptr gives up its pointer, it has to decrement the refcount, because there's no way for the user to do it.