What is the cyclic dependency issue with shared_ptr?

Question

I read about shared pointers and understood how to use. But I never understood the cyclic dependency problem with shared pointers and how weak pointers are going to fix thos

Answer 1

shard_ptr <----| shared_ptr <------
    ^             |          ^          |
    |             |          |          |
    |             |          |          |
    |             |          |          |
    |             |          |          |
class A           |     class B         |
    |             |          |          |
    |             ------------          |
    |                                   |
    -------------------------------------

Now if we make the shared_ptr of the class B and A, the use_count of the both pointer is two.

When the shared_ptr goes out od scope the count still remains 1 and hence the A and B object does not gets deleted.

class B;

class A
{
    shared_ptr sP1; // use weak_ptr instead to avoid CD

public:
    A() {  cout << "A()" << endl; }
    ~A() { cout << "~A()" << endl; }

    void setShared(shared_ptr& p)
    {
        sP1 = p;
    }
};

class B
{
    shared_ptr sP1;

public:
    B() {  cout << "B()" << endl; }
    ~B() { cout << "~B()" << endl; }

    void setShared(shared_ptr& p)
    {
        sP1 = p;
    }
};

int main()
{
    shared_ptr aPtr(new A);
    shared_ptr bPtr(new B);

    aPtr->setShared(bPtr);
    bPtr->setShared(aPtr);

    return 0;  
}

output:

A()
B()

As we can see from the output that A and B pointer are never deleted and hence memory leak.

To avoid such issue just use weak_ptr in class A instead of shared_ptr which makes more sense.