Abstract: Students traditionally have difficulties in implementing abstract data structures (ADS) in C++. To a large extent, these difficulties are due to language complexity in terms of memory management with raw pointers – the programmer must take care of too many details to provide reliable, efficient and secure implementation. Since all these technical details distract students from the essence of the studied algorithms, we decided to use in the course in DSA (Data Structures and Algorithms) an automated resource management, provided by the C++ standard ISO/IEC 14882:2011. In this work we share experience of using smart pointers to implement linked lists and discuss pedagogical aspects and effectiveness of the new classes, compared to the traditional library containers and implementation via built-in pointers.

Ivaylo Donchev and Emilia Todorova, “Implementation of ADS Linked List Via Smart Pointers” International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 6(2), 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060229

@article{Donchev2015,
title = {Implementation of ADS Linked List Via Smart Pointers},
journal = {International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications},
doi = {10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060229},
url = {http://dx.doi.org/10.14569/IJACSA.2015.060229},
year = {2015},
publisher = {The Science and Information Organization},
volume = {6},
number = {2},
author = {Ivaylo Donchev and Emilia Todorova}
}