Topic 5. Pointers, references and memory management: the new and delete operators, smart pointers

Goal: learn to distinguish owners from observers; implement linked structures; check buffer bounds and find memory errors

Lecture contents

1. Memory and pointers — Memory, objects and storage duration · Pointers and access operations · Arrays and pointer arithmetic
2. Dynamic memory and its errors — Manual dynamic memory · Memory errors and diagnostics
3. Smart pointers — unique_ptr: a single responsible owner · shared_ptr and weak_ptr · A linked list with exclusive ownership
4. Ownership models and span — A non-owning interface and span · Choosing an ownership model · Analyzing an ownership graph in concrete scenarios
5. Diagnostic experiments — A buffer experiment: before and after release · How to run a diagnostic experiment · Removing a node without breaking the chain

Practice and review

• Practice — 3 worked examples with full code and output
• Tasks — 30 variants, each with tasks at three difficulty levels
• Summary — conclusions, self-check questions, and useful links