Problems with shared_ptr wrapping a dynamic array

Question

I wanted to replace some raw pointers in my class with a std::shared_ptr so that I don\'t have to worry when I create copies of that class. But the raw pointers

Answer 1

The solution you suggest is possible, but you will lose the size of the array:

#include 
#include 

using namespace std;

template shared_ptr make_shared_array(size_t size)
{
   return shared_ptr(new T[size], default_delete());
}

struct Foo
{
  shared_ptr field;
};

int main()  
{
  Foo a;
  a.field = make_shared_array(256);

 return 0;
}

What I have done here is to let the array decay into a pointer. As long as the deleter is an array deleter it should behave correctly.

To prevent this loss of size, and if you cannot use boost::shared_array as suggested, I would suggest to encapsulate this information in your own shared_array class.