Understanding std::shared_ptr behavior during circular references in C++
I'm a bit lost with I'm working on a personal project and I've looked through the documentation and I'm still confused about I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help. After trying multiple solutions online, I still can't figure this out. I'm working with an scenario with `std::shared_ptr` in C++11 where I'm working with a memory leak due to circular references. I have a simple linked structure where each node points to its next and previous node, and I'm using `shared_ptr` to manage them. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```cpp #include <iostream> #include <memory> struct Node { std::shared_ptr<Node> next; std::shared_ptr<Node> prev; Node() : next(nullptr), prev(nullptr) {} }; int main() { auto node1 = std::make_shared<Node>(); auto node2 = std::make_shared<Node>(); node1->next = node2; node2->prev = node1; // Circular reference here return 0; } ``` When I run this code, I see that the destructor for `Node` is never called, leading to a memory leak. I have tried using `std::weak_ptr` for one of the pointers to break the cycle, but Iām not sure how to implement it correctly. When I change `node2->prev` to a `weak_ptr`, I lose access to `node1` from `node2`. How can I properly break the circular reference while still allowing traversal between nodes? Is there a best practice for handling this type of scenario in C++? Any examples would be greatly appreciated! Also, Iām using GCC 9.3.0. My development environment is Windows. This is part of a larger CLI tool I'm building. Am I missing something obvious? This issue appeared after updating to Cpp 3.9. I'd really appreciate any guidance on this. This is happening in both development and production on Debian. Any help would be greatly appreciated!