How to use C++ standard smart pointers with Windows HANDLEs?

Question

I was wondering if there is a way to use unique_ptr with Windows HANDLEs?

I was thinking to replace the std::default_delete with s

Answer 1

You can create a Deleter class that will release the handle instead of calling delete().

You can see in this LINK how they've solved deleting arrays with a shared_ptr (unique_ptr also has a constructor that recieves a Delete class)

  struct handle_deleter
  {   
    void operator ()( HANDLE handle)
      { CloseHandle(p); }
  };

  HANDLE blah = GetSomeHandle();
  unique_ptr myPointer(blah,handle_deleter);