Counting references of a deleted ReferenceCountedObject

1

Hi all,

I have a simple struct that extends ReferenceCountedObject:

struct Thing : public ReferenceCountedObject
{
};

Which I’m using as follows:

int main (int argc, char** argv)
{
	ReferenceCountedArray<Thing, CriticalSection> things;
	things.add(new Thing());
	Thing* thing = things[0].get();  // grab a pointer to thing

	std::cout << thing->getReferenceCount() << " refs\n"; 

	things.remove(0);

	std::cout << thing->getReferenceCount() << " refs\n";  // (1)

    return 0;
}

The docs on ReferenceCountedArray::remove() say:

The object that is removed will have its reference count decreased, and may be deleted if not referenced from elsewhere.

I might be completely wrong here (bear with me), but In my code at (1) the object is no longer referenced from elsewhere. Am I calling getReferenceCount() on an object that has been just removed? How come it doesn’t crash?

2

It may be random luck. The memory address was not reallocated and the object still “lives” there.
Release or debug mode?

3

@Matthieu_Brucher I agree with you on the luck part. I’m on Linux, tried both release and debug modes. Same results.

4

You may see some different results on different platforms.
If you want to check if it’s destroyed, add a destructor with some debug output.

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