Correctly managing the release of heap-allocated memory and other resources has been one of the great challenges of C and C++ development for decades. The new shared_ptr class, shipping with Visual Studio 2008 SP1 and Visual Studio 2010, makes dealing with resource management dramatically simpler.
Learn the reason behind using pointer-to-pointer and reference-to-pointer to modify a pointer passed to a function, to understand their usage better.
A beginning-level article covering the problems, bugs, and technique solutions that correspond to using pointers.
Smart Pointer (with Object Level Thread Synchronization '& Reference Counting Garbage Collection)
Allows assignment from derived class to a base class and has a BackPtr class to implement weak references
Smart Pointer that supports subclassing
Performs reference counting, garbage collection and supports subclasses
Function Pointers to Non-Static Object Methods
Smart Pointers and other Pointer classes
