template specialization of a auto_ptr<T>
- by Chris Kaminski
Maybe I'm overcomplicating things, but then again, I do sort of like clean interfaces. Let's say I want a specialization of auto_ptr for an fstream - I want a default fstream for the generic case, but allow a replacement pointer?
tempate <>
class auto_ptr<fstream>
static fstream myfStream;
fstream* ptr;
public:
auto_ptr() {
// set ptr to &myfStream;
}
reset(fstream* newPtr) {
// free old ptr if not the static one.
ptr = newPtr
};
}
Would you consider something different or more elegant? And how would you keep something like the above from propagating outside this particular compilation unit?
[The actual template is a boost::scoped_ptr.]
EDIT:
It's a contrived example. Ignore the fstream - it's about providing a default instance of object for an auto_ptr. I may not want to provide a specialized instance, but would like to keep the auto_ptr semantics for this static default object.
class UserClass {
public:
auto_ptr<fstream> ptr;
UserClass() { }
}
I may not provide an dynamic object at construction time - I still want it to have a meaningful default. Since I'm not looking at ownership-transfer semantics, it really shouldn't matter that my pointer class is pointing to a statically allocated object, no?
