From: Greg Colvin (gcolvin_at_[hidden])
Date: 2002-02-05 00:09:59
From: "Howard Hinnant" <hinnant_at_[hidden]>
> On Monday, February 4, 2002, at 08:05 PM, Greg Colvin wrote:
>
> >> I imagine you would be
> >> one of the first to agree that giving auto_ptr move semantics was not
> >> easy, or at least not straight forward! :-)
> >
> > It was the most evil and ugly thing I was ever forced to do. ;->
>
> </somewhat off topic>
>
> But I feel moved to speak.
>
> I honestly feel that auto_ptr is a pioneer. The mother of smart
> pointers if you will. I have great admiration for the work that Greg
> and Bill Gibbons did on auto_ptr, and under tremendous pressure I'm
> sure. I know that there were smart pointers before auto_ptr. But
> auto_ptr managed to satisfy the entire standards committee in 1997. And
> as I have gradually come to believe just over the past year, I think
> auto_ptr is the forerunner of generalized move semantics. There is
> great parallel between auto_ptr_ref and John's move_t I spoke of
> earlier. Greg and Bill were designing working move semantics in '97 and
> I'm still struggling with this issue 5 years later.
>
> My hat is off to Greg and Bill. A job well done! I can not imagine
> trying to design move semantics today without auto_ptr to stand on.
<blush>
We were unwilling pioneers. The auto_ptr originally accepted
was much simpler, because I thought the language still allowed
temporaries to bind to non-const references. When I found out
I was wrong I switched to a version that transfered a mutable
ownership bit, but didn't zero out the source pointer. That
version proved most unpopular, and under great time pressure
Bill Gibbons came up with the auto_ptr_ref hack, which took
advantage of some loopholes on loopholes to imitate binding to
a non-const reference.
It turns out that auto_ptr_ref doesn't quite do the job:
http://std.dkuug.dk/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/cwg_defects.html#84
In particular, the line labeled 16 below does not compile:
// 1
struct Base { // 2
static void sink(auto_ptr<Base>); // 3
}; // 4
struct Derived : Base { // 5
static void sink(auto_ptr<Derived>); // 6
}; // 7
auto_ptr<Derived> source() { // 8
auto_ptr<Derived> p(source()); // 9
auto_ptr<Derived> pp(p); // 10
Derived::sink(source()); // 11
p = pp; // 12
p = source(); // 13
auto_ptr<Base> q(source()); // 14
auto_ptr<Base> qp(p); // 15
Base::sink(source()); // 16
q = pp; // 17
q = source(); // 18
return p; // 19
return source();
}
For the next standard I'd like to rewrite the specification to
match the original version, but in the form of a requirements
table for an auto_ptr concept, and leave it implementors to
make it work -- perhaps via a move intrinsic or extension.