OpenSceneGraph 3.0

Collecting garbage: why and how

Here are some reasons for using smart pointers and the garbage collection system in programming:

• Fewer bugs: Using smart pointers means the automatic initialization and cleanup of pointers. No dangling pointers will be created because they are always reference-counted.
• Efficient management: Objects will be reclaimed as soon as they are no longer referenced, which gives more available memory to applications with limited resources.
• Easy to debug: We can easily obtain the referenced counting number and other information on objects, and then apply other optimizations and experiments.

For instance, a scene graph tree is composed by a root node and multiple levels of child nodes. Assuming that all children are managed with ...