Question

Question is in subject.

I want to write some universal template function for safe deleting objects and wondering is it possible to use something like this:

template< class T > void SafeDelete( T*& pVal )
{
    if(objc_is_cpp_object(pVal)){
        delete pVal;
        pVal = NULL;
    }
    else
        [pVal release]
}

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments, I would suggest not to mix the C++ delete and Objective-C release.
Just for technical point of view, you can use the following SFINAE trick runtime:

template<typename T> struct void_ { typedef void type; };

template<typename, typename = void>
struct CppType { static const bool value = false; };
template<typename T>
struct CppType<T, typename void_<int (T::*)>::type> { static const bool value = true; };

template< class T > 
void SafeDelete( T*& pVal )
{
  if(CppType<T>::value || std::is_pod<T>::value) {  // <-----
    delete pVal;
    pVal = 0;
  }   
  else {
     // [pVal release];
  }   
}

Possibly, is_pod is available in C++11, boost etc. But it’s easy to implement.