Re: Avoiding dangling pointers.

On Apr 11, 5:33 pm, Rafael Anschau <rafael.ansc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> I read that you should assign null (0) to all pointers that you call
> delete on.

I would describe this advice as "Cargo Cult
Programming."  While there are situations where
you will want to set a point to zero after a
delete, there are far more situations where
it is just wasted code.

The real way to avoid dangling pointers is
to figure out _why_ you are getting dangling
pointers, and deal with _that_.  A dangling
pointer may indicate that your code is confused
about who owns the object, or that you have
not thought out the object's lifetime or
life cycle.  Or that you haven't thought
out your use cases (so you're calling a function
that expects a pointer in a situation in which
there is logically nothing to point to.)
Or a host of other logic errors.

By the way, while I think smart pointers are
a great idea, I'm a little leery of advising
beginners to use them to avoid pointer problems.
IMHO, most of the time, pointer problems arise
because of logic errors which can't be fixed
by substituting smart pointers.

There's really no substitute for knowing what
you're doing, and it's doubly so when dealing
with pointers (dumb or smart.)


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