When I read this, I immediately thought about std/boost::shared_ptr. This is a bit ironic since Linus hates C++ so much. shared_ptr is a really nice thing in C

When I read this, I immediately thought about std/boost::shared_ptr. This is a bit ironic since Linus hates C++ so much. shared_ptr is a really nice thing in C++. (For those who don't know: It is a ref-counting pointer with automatic freeing.) And its behavior is very deterministic. In many cases in complex C++ applications, you want to use that.