Re: Avoiding dangling pointers.

"Thomas Maeder" <maeder@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:m2wsn3ipsx.fsf@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Rafael Anschau <rafael.anschau@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> writes:

>> I read that you should assign null (0) to all pointers that you call
>> delete on.

> My opinion is to replace such pointers by smart pointer objects.

Agreed.

For years, I have been hearing people claim that it's a good idea to set
pointers to zero after deleting them, and the claim has always made me
uncomfortable without my being able to figure out quite why.

A few moments ago, I suddenly realized why this code makes me
uncomfortable:

     delete p;
     p = 0;

How can you test it?  In other words, suppose you forgot to set p to 0. 
How
would you detect the oversight?

So I think my discomfort comes from the notion that it is a good idea to
write code that you intend to behave in a way that's somewhere between
difficult and impossible to test.


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