design patterns - Can any one provide me a sample of Singleton in c++?

Question

I write a singleton c++ in the follow way:

class A {
    private:
        static A* m_pA;
        A();
        virtual ~A();

    public:
        static A* GetInstance();
        static void FreeInstance();

        void WORK1();
        void WORK2();
        void WORK3();
    }
}

A* A::GetInstance() {
    if (m_pA == NULL)
        m_pA = new A();
    return m_pA;
}

A::~A() {
    FreeInstance()  // Can I write this? are there any potential error?
}

void A::FreeInstance() {
    delete m_pA;
    m_pA = NULL;
}

Thanks! Evan Teran and sep61.myopenid.com 's answer is right, and really good! My way is wrong, I wish any one writting such code can avoid my silly mistake.

My singleton A in my project has a vector of smart pointer, and another thread can also edit this vector, so when the application is closing, it always become unstable even I add lots of CMutex. Multithread error + singleton error wasted me 1 day.

//----------------------------------------------------------- A new singleton, you are welcome to edit if you think there is any problem in the following sample:

class A {
    private:
        static A* m_pA;
        explicit A();
        void A(const A& a);
        void A(A &a);
        const A& operator=(const A& a);
        virtual ~A();

    public:
        static A* GetInstance();
        static void FreeInstance();

        void WORK1();
        void WORK2();
        void WORK3();
    }
}

A* A::GetInstance() {
    if (m_pA == NULL){
        static A self;
        m_pA = &self;
    }
    return m_pA;
}

A::~A() {
}

Answer 1

Why does everybody want to return a singleton as a pointer?
Return it as a reference seems much more logical!

You should never be able to free a singleton manually. How do you know who is keeping a reference to the singleton? If you don't know (or can't guarantee) nobody has a reference (in your case via a pointer) then you have no business freeing the object.

Use the static in a function method.
This guarantees that it is created and destroyed only once. It also gives you lazy initialization for free.

class S
{
    public:
        static S& getInstance()
        {
            static S    instance;
            return instance;
        }
    private:
        S() {}
        S(S const&);              // Don't Implement.
        void operator=(S const&); // Don't implement
 };

Note you also need to make the constructor private. Also make sure that you override the default copy constructor and assignment operator so that you can not make a copy of the singleton (otherwise it would not be a singleton).

Also read:

• https://stackoverflow.com/a/1008289/14065
• Singleton: How should it be used
• C++ Singleton design pattern

To make sure you are using a singleton for the correct reasons.

Though technically not thread safe in the general case see:
What is the lifetime of a static variable in a C++ function?

GCC has an explicit patch to compensate for this:
http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-patches/2004-09/msg00265.html