Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!becker!hybrid!scifi!bywater!uunet!cimshop!davidm From: cimshop!davidm@uunet.UU.NET (David S. Masterson) Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++ Subject: Re: Smart pointers and stupid people (was: garbage collection...) Message-ID: Date: 16 Jan 91 20:05:13 GMT References: <4127@osc.COM> <3344@lupine.NCD.COM> Sender: davidm@cimshop.UUCP Distribution: comp Organization: Consilium Inc., Mountain View, California Lines: 23 In-reply-to: rfg@NCD.COM's message of 12 Jan 91 23:05:11 GMT X-Posting-Software: GNUS 3.12 [ NNTP-based News Reader for GNU Emacs ] >>>>> On 12 Jan 91 23:05:11 GMT, rfg@NCD.COM (Ron Guilmette) said: David> In particular, if there are temp copies of the pointers on the stack or David> register references, who cares? Ron> Exactly. Ahhh, but (as you posted in other messages) can this be statement be guaranteed through lexical restrictions in the language. My statement is made from the perspective that, even if there are "dead" pointers lying around, as long as you don't use them (and so, write your program accordingly), you're safe. Viewing that from the language implementation end, though, means that the language must guarantee that these temporary copies of pointers *no longer exist* outside their lexical scope (even if its to pass pointers from one valid scope to another valid scope cannot be allowed). Its an entirely different emphasis. -- ==================================================================== David Masterson Consilium, Inc. (415) 691-6311 640 Clyde Ct. uunet!cimshop!davidm Mtn. View, CA 94043 ==================================================================== "If someone thinks they know what I said, then I didn't say it!"