Goals • Introduce the code for maintaining reference counts –A reference count is a count of the number of times an object is shared

–Pointer manipulations have to maintain the count
• Class UCObject holds the count –“Use-counted object”
• UCPointer is a smart pointer to a UCObject –A smart pointer is an object defined by a class –Implemented using a template
–Overloads operator-> and unary operator*

Computer Science > Object-Oriented