The cost of passing by shared_ptr

Question

I use std::tr1::shared_ptr extensively throughout my application. This includes passing objects in as function arguments. Consider the following:

class Datas         


        

Answer 1

You need shared_ptr only to pass it to functions/objects which keep it for future use. For example, some class may keep shared_ptr for using in an worker thread. For simple synchronous calls it's quite enough to use plain pointer or reference. shared_ptr should not replace using plain pointers completely.