Summary
Garbage collectors in languages such as C# are provided by the environment. They work in parallel with the user program and try to clean up after the program whenever it seems efficient. We cannot do the same in C++; all we can do is implement a garbage collector directly in the program, providing a semi-automatic way of freeing the used memory resource. This mechanism is properly covered by the smart pointers that have been part of the language since C++11.
Memory management is one of the key components of every computer program. A program should be able to request memory dynamically during its execution. Good programmers understand the inner details of memory management. That helps them design and implement more performant applications. While manual memory management is considered an advantage, it tends to become painful in larger applications. In this chapter, we learned how we can avoid errors and handle memory deallocation using smart pointers. Having this basic understanding...