> like a weak pointer that work with unique_ptr, but I do not think it is possible to do this while preserving zero overhead implementation I think the type of

> like a weak pointer that work with unique_ptr, but I do not think it is possible to do this while preserving zero overhead implementation I think the type of pointer you're asking for basically does exist. First, you want to distinguish the cases when you want a "full featured" weak pointer that can gracefully handle the destruction of its target object [1] (rarely the case), or you just want a non-owning pointer that detects when the prorammer screws up and lets the target object be destroyed prematurely [2]. The latter is essentially just a non-owning reference counting pointer. The optimizer should be able to discard matching increments and decrements of the reference counter in many cases. > This will have overhead, but it could be worth it for the security gains. The performance cost of avoiding "unsafe" C++ elements is measurable, but reasonably modest [3]. [1] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#registered-pointers https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#registered-... [2] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#norad-pointers https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus#norad-point... [3] https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus-BenchmarksGame https://github.com/duneroadrunner/SaferCPlusPlus-BenchmarksG...