C++ - passing references to std::shared_ptr or boost::shared_ptr

Question

If I have a function that needs to work with a shared_ptr, wouldn\'t it be more efficient to pass it a reference to it (so to avoid copying the shared_ptr

Answer 1

In the second case, doing this is simpler:

Class::only_work_with_sp(foo &sp)
{    
    ...  
    sp.do_something();  
    ...  
}

You can call it as

only_work_with_sp(*sp);