When is it not a good idea to pass by reference?

Question

This is a memory allocation issue that I\'ve never really understood.

void unleashMonkeyFish()  
{  
    MonkeyFish * monkey_fish = new MonkeyFish();
    std::string          


        

Answer 1

This is precisely the problem that reference counting is meant to solve. You could use the Boost shared_ptr<> to reference the string object in a way such that it lives at least as long as every pointer at it.

Personally I never trust it, though, preferring to be explicit about the allocation and lifespan of all my objects. litb's solution is preferable.