Are there any valid use cases to use new and delete, raw pointers or c-style arrays with modern C++?

Question

Here\'s a notable video (Stop teaching C) about that paradigm change to take in teaching the c++ language.

And an also notable blog post

Answer 1

The OP specificly asks about how/when handrolling will be more efficient in an everyday use case - and I will address that.

Assuming a modern day compiler/stl/platform, there is not an every day use where handrolled use of new and delete will be more efficient. For the shared_ptr case i believe it will be marginal. In an extremely tight loop(s) there could be something to gain by just using raw new to avoid the ref counting (and find some other method of cleaning up - unless somehow imposed on you, you choose to use shared_ptr for a reason), but that is not an everyday or common example. For the unique_ptr there is not actually any difference, so i think it is safe to say that it is more of rumour and folklore and that performance wise it will not actually matter at all (difference will not be measurable in normal cases).

There are cases where it is not desirable or possible to use a smart pointer class as already covered by others.