Re: memory management in Ada: tedious without GC?

[Simon Wright <simon.j.wright@mac.com>]

Brian Drummond <brian_drummond@btconnect.com> writes:

> Which explained to me how changing from ptr to auto_ptr (presumably
> to make code safer!) can introduce a spectacularly silly bug,
> completely statically determinable, but which the compiler allows
> just fine and lets the code die with a segfault.

Is auto_ptr the one where assignment moves the content? "b = a;" means
that a is now null and b references the previous content of a?

If so, it seems to me that it's the concept that's spectacularly
silly! (I considered introducing an auto pointer into the Booch
Components, but then thought about using it .. I can see that there
might be a use within a very narrow scope, but a standard ref-counted
smart pointer works just as well. No doubt there is an appropriate
usage idiom?)