Class members that are objects - Pointers or not? C++

Question

If I create a class MyClass and it has some private member say MyOtherClass, is it better to make MyOtherClass a pointer or not? What does it mean also to have it as not a

Answer 1

An advantage of the parent class maintaining the relation to a member object as a (std::auto_ptr) pointer to the member object is that you can forward declare the object rather than having to include the object's header file.

This decouples the classes at build time allowing to modify the member object's header class without causing all the clients of your parent class to be recompiled as well even though they probably do not access the member object's functions.

When you use an auto_ptr, you only need to take care of construction, which you could typically do in the initializer list. Destruction along with the parent object is guaranteed by the auto_ptr.