Word to the wise

[pne]

Don't copy pointers to child objects (has-a relationship) in your operator =; sharing common children this way will bite you when you try to destroy your child objects and they've already been destroyed.

Fortunately, the STL implementation we use replaces internal pointers with "magic" nonsense values after the object is destroyed so you at least get a segfault and notice.

Comments

[crschmidt.livejournal.com]

"If you're lucky, you get a segfault.

If you're unlucky, you're just screwed."

Jason Zych, Data Structures in C++, UIUC 2003.

[pne.livejournal.com]

Very true. Especially the bit about segfaulting being the lucky case.

have you consider smart pointers?

[signal11.livejournal.com]

I use them fairly extensively for code I write at work. It's designed (to me a least!) for these sort of problems.

The implementation I use at work is not available publicly but I've heard these are pretty good:
http://www.boost.org/libs/smart_ptr/index.htm

[timwi.livejournal.com]

The joys of implicit sharing, as done fantastically in Qt :-)