Worth noting that auto_ptr is decidedly not modern, it was deprecated in c++11 because it was error prone and replaced with C++11's unique_ptr (and shared_ptr/w

Worth noting that auto_ptr is decidedly not modern, it was deprecated in c++11 because it was error prone and replaced with C++11's unique_ptr (and shared_ptr/weak_ptr too sort of, although they have a different use case -- unique_ptr really is basically the same use case as auto_ptr). I figure you didn't mean to call it out specifically and more meant general smart pointers, but just felt I'd let you know that searching for that terminology may lead you astray.