RAII object for releasing pointer with arbitrary function

Question

The following class is a sort of "smart pointer" that can be used for automatically releasing pointers:

template <class Type>
class Releaser {
 public:
  Releaser(std::function<void(Type *)> function = [](Type *value) {
    value->Release();
  });
  ~Releaser();
  Type *operator->();
  Type &operator*();
  Type *get();
  Type **fill();

 private:
  Type *value_ = nullptr;
  std::function<void(Type *)> function_;
};

template <class Type>
Releaser<Type>::Releaser(std::function<void(Type *)> function)
    : function_(function) {}

template <class Type>
Releaser<Type>::~Releaser() {
  if (value_) function_(value_);
}

template <class Type>
Type *Releaser<Type>::operator->() {
  return value_;
}

template <class Type>
Type &Releaser<Type>::operator*() {
  return *value_;
}

template <class Type>
Type *Releaser<Type>::get() {
  return value_;
}

template <class Type>
Type **Releaser<Type>::fill() {
  return &value_;
}

It can be used for example like this:

Releaser<IMFAttributes> attributes;
auto status = MFCreateAttributes(attributes.fill(), 1);

where MFCreateAttributes has the following signature:

MFCreateAttributes(IMFAttributes** ppMFAttributes, unsigned int cInitialSize);

Do you see any way to improve this (e.g by getting rid of the std::function), or make it safer?

Answer 1

unique_ptr has capability for custom deleters.

Besides that assuming you are doing this to deal with COM objects then you can use ComPtr and its GetAddressOf

---

If you define a destructor you should also define (or disallow in this case) the copy construct and copy assign. Failure to do so will result in dangling pointers and double frees:

Releaser<IMFAttributes> attributes;
auto status = MFCreateAttributes(attributes.fill(), 1);
{
    Releaser<IMFAttributes> att = attributes;
} // att gets cleaned up

//attributes contains a dangling pointer