Do shared pointers incur performance penalties?

I've been considering using shared pointers (e.g., Boost Smart Pointers) but want to know in what situations they would incur performance penalties. I need to write some programs where execution speed is very important. Can someone enlighten me on this?

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Originally Posted by msgboardjunkie

I've been considering using shared pointers (e.g., Boost Smart Pointers) but want to know in what situations they would incur performance penalties. I need to write some programs where execution speed is very important. Can someone enlighten me on this?

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Yes they do. Here are Boost's own timings,

http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_36_0...smarttests.htm

In my experience in the general case the code safety and ease of use of a shared smart pointer vastly outweigths the overhead.

But there's a grayzone when you want some more speed and is willing to trade in some flexibility and ease of use for speed. Then I use an intrusive smart pointer.

Finally there's the extreme case when speed is all important or smart pointers cannot be used because of cyclic references. Then raw pointers rule.

Wow! thank you so much. this is a great article!

Probably not the best place for that question, anyways:

I'm working with qt from its very first release. Now, that NOKIA bought the whole Trolltech, it's getting too expensive. I heard a lot of good things about BOOST. Any recommendable source??

Thanks and best from the south.

Woh, Nokia had bought QT. This is a sad news to us.

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Originally Posted by ariell

Probably not the best place for that question, anyways:

I'm working with qt from its very first release. Now, that NOKIA bought the whole Trolltech, it's getting too expensive. I heard a lot of good things about BOOST. Any recommendable source??

Thanks and best from the south.

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It's considered rude to hijack other people's threads.

Anyway Qt is a GUI and Boost doesn't offer a GUI. Check out wxWidgets. It's an open source portable GUI.