[vinkelhake]

I realize that you're mostly ranting, but on the off chance that you're serious: check out std::make_shared. It's a helper function that can allocate storage for the object and shared_ptr's control block in one go. It comes with its own caveats (what doesn't in C++?), but it has the answer to your concern about allocations.

[ovao]

To add: according to cppreference, all known STL implementations leverage this optimization. This used to be specific to Microsoft's STL implementation, but apparently all the major STL vendors are now on-board with it.

[gpderetta]

make_shared traces its roots back into the original boost implementation.

[rosshemsley]

Yep I know it :)

My joke was "Oh, I should return a unique_ptr<>, but then I will be losing out on the make_shared optimization" ;)