best practice when returning smart pointers

Question

What is the best practice when returning a smart pointer, for example a boost::shared_ptr? Should I by standard return the smart pointer, or the underlying raw pointer? I co

Answer 1

I wouldn't put raw pointers in vectors.

In case they use auto_ptr or boost::scoped_ptr, they can't use (or return) anything but raw pointers. That could explain their way of coding, i guess.