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From: cs162sbj@uape_5.ucsd.edu (....What Is?....)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Object pointers, and destructors
Message-ID: <19944@sdcc6.ucsd.edu>
Date: 31 May 91 11:16:49 GMT
Sender: news@sdcc6.ucsd.edu
Distribution: comp
Organization: University of California, San Diego
Lines: 23

I've become a pretty good beginner at C++ & am ready to move on to
intermediate.  Before I do, I need some clarifications on C++ that I
haven't been able to find in the books I've read.  They might be dumb
questions, or may have been thoroughly discussed, but here goes
anyways.

[1] Why aren't pointers hidden/protected/controlled/etc. the way
	class objects are?  I was doing a symbol table for a class project
	which kept reference counts on all the objects & the objects that
	they pointed to, and a single pointer assignment in the "main
	program" from a pointer returned by a member function to a new
	pointer is enough to throw the reference count off.  I want to be
	able to control pointer assignments the way I can control object
	assignments, but I haven't been able to overload operators using
	pointers to objects, just objects.  How is what I want to do
	accomplished cleanly?

[2] Why doesn't delete() automatically set the original pointer to
	NULL?  I can't do it from within my destructor, and I can find no
	reason to leave it pointing to freed memory.

Steven Boswell
whatis@ucsd.edu