> At any rate, the definition of “zero cost” isn’t “it’s the same as a raw pointer”. Rather, it should be read as “its cost is the same as the equivalent functi

> At any rate, the definition of “zero cost” isn’t “it’s the same as a raw pointer”. Rather, it should be read as “its cost is the same as the equivalent functionality rolled by hand” What kind of definition is that? Zero cost is exactly that - 0 cost, the same performance as if you were not using the abstraction. The alternative to an abstraction is not "my hand-rolled implementation of said abstraction" - it is not using the abstraction, at all (but using lower-level mechanisms to achieve the same goal). 0-cost is used to tell people "you will still achieve the same performance by using the abstraction - and you gain additional benefits (safety, readability etc)". If I can get better performance with raw pointers, then smart pointers are not zero cost (it's still a good idea to use them instead of raw pointers! Just, let's stop pretending they are zero-cost)