I think you’re making a joke, but reference counting is different than what a unique pointer does. (a destructor is not the same thing as a reference count, even if that reference count is limited as you suggest.)
No, I don't think it's a joke. It's just that when your counter is limited to values of 0 and 1 only, you can optimize it so heavily it almost looks like a different thing entirely: binary semaphores are usually called mutexes, but they're still semaphores.
It was a joke and not a joke, a joke with a kernel of truth.
But I only now just discovered that C23 is genuinely adding `BOOL_MAX`, which reminds me of the classic Fortran —
> The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of pi change.
Since that counter can only have two values, it's storage is optimized and merged with the underlying raw pointer itself (not unlike Rust's null pointer optimization for enums): non-null value of the underlying pointer also serve to represent the counter's value of 1, and the null value serves to represent the counter's value of 0. The check to not under-decrement, for example, manifests as the null check before calling the deleter on the underlying pointer.
Sigh, I saw this coming. By this definition, every C++ object with a (non-trivial) destructor would be "reference counted". Sorry, but I am not interested in playing word games.
Nope. Only those with "if (this->inner_resource) { /* delete inner resource */ }" inside the destructor could count, others wouldn't.
Edit: actually, nevermind. You are (almost) right: all objects with automatic storage duration and with non-trivial destructors are, very pedantically speaking, reference counted; but objects with dynamic storage duration are not. So RAII works by leveraging the built-in very primitive and restricted (binary) form of reference counting and builds on top of it to be able to reference-count objects with dynamic storage duration as well.
I can’t upvote this comment enough. The amount of pedantic nonsense on HN these days is disappointing. I’m not sure why I even bother to read comments here anymore.
