C++ Design Patterns – Difference Between Singleton and auto_ptr/unique_ptr

cdesign-patternssingleton

I'm maintaining some legacy code of a physical simulation. The calculation object is build as a singleton, to ensure there is only one instance. A co-worker told me, that singleton are completely out-of-date and I should instantiate it through a smartpointer. But I think it is not the same, because the initialization by a smartpointer doesn't garanties me, that there is only one instance of this object, right?

If I wanna have one single instance of an object in my code, which way is preferable:

To use the singleton pattern or the initialize the object through one of this smartpointers (auto_ptr<> or unique_ptr<>).

Best Answer

If you want to enforce that there is only a single instance of some class, then you must use the Singleton pattern. (aside from the question if your analysis is correct that you will only ever need a single instance.)

The C++ smart pointers auto_ptr<> and unique_ptr<> enforce a completely different contract, namely that there is only one reference (or pointer) to a given instance.

For example, this code is perfectly legal, but there are clearly two instances of Resource:

class Resource {
// ...
};

std::unique_ptr<Resource> instance1(new Resource());
std::unique_ptr<Resource> instance2(new Resource());
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