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Message: [QUOTE="Karl Heinz Buchegger, post: 1465630"] Says who? Sometimes you don't have a choice. You are concentrating too much on returning pointers. void bar( int Type ) { Obj* pObj; pObj = Factory.CreateObject( Type ); // do something // object no longer needed, delete it. delete pObj; } Now lets say, that the part // do something is rather complicated and there is a chance that things might go wrong. You insert some tests and do a return. But when doing so you must not forget do delete the object given to you from the factory. void bar( int Type ) { Obj* pObj; pObj = Factory.CreateObject( Type ); // do something ... if( SomeTest ) { delete pObj; return; } if( SomeOtherTest ) { ... while( ... ) { if( AThirdTest ) return; } } // object no longer needed, delete it. delete pObj; } So you see the big? Deep inside the while, there is an if which returns. It happened to me, that I forgot to delete pObj, because I am human :-) An auto_ptr saves me from all of this. I don't need to remember to delete pObj, it is done automatically for me. For the very same reason that you use vector instead of dynamically allocated arrays, you use an auto_ptr when you must use a pointer, to free yourself from human errors and to easen maintenance (who says that this test was there in the first place. It could have been added weeks later). [/QUOTE]