CXAutoReference

The CXAutoReference templated class allows reference-counted objects to be passed around while automatically maintaining the correct reference count. This is a very simple and powerful tool to use for resource management. The referenced object must expose a specific reference counting interface- typically this is achieved by inheriting from DynamicReferenceCount but other techniques are permitted.

 

CXAutoReference<T> is designed to act in a manner syntactically equivalent to T* where possible.

Restrictions

Performance

Reference Cycles

Thread Safety

Conversion to C pointer

Stack-Allocated Objects

 

Techniques

Allocation / Swallow / Reference

Zero-Reference Cache

Passing by const reference

Move operator

Casting

std::swap