Question

Dereferencing pointers can make the code very hard to read. What I usually do is putting a reference to the pointed object and working with the reference. Example:

shared_ptr<std::vector<int> > sp = get_sp_to_vector();
std::vector<int>& vec = *sp;
...
vec.push_back(5);

I wonder if it’s a good practice. Does it have any drawback?

Update: To complete the example, I’d define get_sp_to_vector() the following way:

shared_ptr<std::vector<int> >  get_sp_to_vector()
{
    // create a vector and send back a shared pointer pointing at it
    shared_ptr<std::vector<int> >  sp(new std::vector<int>);
    sp->push_back(1);  sp->push_back(3);
    return sp;
}

Answer 1

Using local references is common, especially inside loop bodies, but there is one requirement: only do it when the reference will obviously live as long as the target object.

This usually isn’t hard to guarantee, but here are some bad examples:

shared_ptr<X> p = get_p();
X& r = *p;
p.reset(); // might result in destroying r
use(r); // oops

// or:
shared_ptr<X> p = get_p();
X& r = *p;
p = get_some_other_p(); // might result in destroying r
use(r); // oops