Simplest way to count instances of an object

Question

I would like to know the exact number of instances of certain objects allocated at certain point of execution. Mostly for hunting possible memory leaks(I mostly use RAII, al

Answer 1

Without knowing your code and your requirements, I see 2 reasonable options:

a) Use boost::shared_ptr. It has the atomic reference counts you suggested built in and takes care of your memory management (so that you'd never actually care to look at the count). Its reference count is available through the use_count() member.

b) If the implications of a), like dealing with pointers and having shared_ptrs everywhere, or possible performance overhead, are not acceptable for you, I'd suggest to simply use available tools for memory leak detection (e.g. Valgrind, see above) that'll report your loose objects at program exit. And there's no need to use intrusive helper classes for (anyway debug-only) tracking object counts, that just mess up your code, IMHO.