vector doesn't use the pointer defined in its allocator

[Tom]

Hi!

I'm doing a project for my university, and I run in some troubles with the  
stl:

I dried to define my own allocator, which allocates memory and returns a  
class defined by me due to a call to allocate(...). This class wraps a  
pointer, and frees it automatically (with refernce-counting), but that's  
not really important...

I have set up the typedefs for the pointer-type in my allocator to this  
class like
	//...
       typedef SmartPointer<T> pointer;
       typedef const SmartPointer<T> const_pointer;
	//...

The problem is, that the vector-class doesn't use these typedefs. I've  
downloaded the newes snapshot available, and I've found in the file  
stl_vector.h code like this:
	//...
       _Tp*
       _M_allocate(size_t __n)
       { return _M_impl.allocate(__n); }
	//...
where I think that this should be:
	//...
	allocator_type::pointer
       _M_allocate(size_t __n)
       { return _M_impl.allocate(__n); }
	//...
Otherwise the conversation-operator from my class is called, and the  
instance from my class is destructed after the call to allocate, which  
leads my class to free the memory :-(

There are a lot of other places where _Tp* is used, where i think it would  
be better to use allocator_type::pointer. I haven't tested this with other  
containers, but I think there is the same problem.

Is there a reason why the typedef pointer isn't used? I've looked in the  
book "The C++ Programming Language" from Bjarne Stroustrup, and he  
descripes some examples where to use an own allocator, where one of these  
is to redefine the pointer-type to be able to access memory which is too  
big for a single pointer (for example with a long). This wouldn't be  
possible with this implementation because there would be always a cast to  
a normal pointer.

Thanks for explications
Thomas