What kind of pointer should I use here?

Question

I'm working on an old large code base with a colleague. The codebase uses a significant number of std::shared_ptr and previous developers had a fondness for long property names (m_first_username for example).

Some methods in our code access a number of those properties so our code tends to be very verbose:

if (m_first_username->isSomethingOrOther() || m_second_username->isOtherOrSomething()...

So to make the code more readable my colleague wants to use more std::shared_ptr & with local scope:

const std::shared_ptr<...> &tmp = m_first_username->returnsASharedPtr() tmp->isSomethingOrOther();

Something I disagree with because of the shared pointer use count.

What is the best way to make this code more readable? Keeping using constant references to shared_ptr, use std::weak_ptr or live with the long lines of code?

Answer 1

As per @nwp's comment -the proper way to alias a variable name locally would be:

auto& v1 = m_first_user_name;

If you want to go the route of the "returnAsSharedPointer" you posted in the question, what you'd want to use in the classes of m_first_user_name and m_second user_name is the standard C++ enable_shared_from_this.

On the whole, though it's primarily opinion-based, I believe you'll find that most experienced C++ developers will find the new code less readable than the old code. There is nothing wrong with long, descriptive variable names.