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Reference counting and STL

A lot of times it is needed to hold objects in a data structure, and not worry about deleting them when clearing, or erasing the objects from the structure. This reference counting scheme does all of that for you. All you need to do is use structures of smart pointers, and you're done.

Example:

std::vector<RefCntPointer<MyObject> > v;
v.push_back(new MyObject);

Now if you clear the vector, or erase the pointer, the object will be freed. If you want to erase it without deleting it, because you need the object somewhere, simply get the pointer and hold it before erasing:

RefCntPointer<MyObject> ptr=v[0];
v.pop_back();

Now the pointer was removed, but the object wasn't deleted. To delete it now, simply do:

ptr=NULL;

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