Why are QWidgets accessed by pointers?

Question

I am new to Qt5 and I am learning QWidgets to develop an application.

I've noticed in many examples, QWidgets are almost always accessed by pointer. For example:

#include <QApplication>
#include <QWidget>
#include <QFrame>
#include <QGridLayout>

class Cursors : public QWidget {

 public:
     Cursors(QWidget *parent = 0);
};

Cursors::Cursors(QWidget *parent)
    : QWidget(parent) {

  QFrame *frame1 = new QFrame(this);
  frame1->setFrameStyle(QFrame::Box);
  frame1->setCursor(Qt::SizeAllCursor);

  QFrame *frame2 = new QFrame(this);
  frame2->setFrameStyle(QFrame::Box);
  frame2->setCursor(Qt::WaitCursor);

  QFrame *frame3 = new QFrame(this);
  frame3->setFrameStyle(QFrame::Box);
  frame3->setCursor(Qt::PointingHandCursor);

  QGridLayout *grid = new QGridLayout(this);
  grid->addWidget(frame1, 0, 0);
  grid->addWidget(frame2, 0, 1);
  grid->addWidget(frame3, 0, 2);

  setLayout(grid);
}

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

  QApplication app(argc, argv);  

  Cursors window;

  window.resize(350, 150);
  window.setWindowTitle("Cursors");
  window.show();

  return app.exec();
}

This is taken from the tutorial: http://zetcode.com/gui/qt5/firstprograms/

Yet, on the same page, I see that we can access the QWidget base class by its object itself:

#include <QApplication>
#include <QWidget>

int main(int argc, char *argv[]) {

    QApplication app(argc, argv);

    QWidget window;

    window.resize(250, 150);
    window.setWindowTitle("Simple example");
    window.show();

    return app.exec();
}

Why is it necessary to access all QWidget derived classes by their pointer? Why isn't it necessary to access QWidget itself by its pointer?

Answer 1

It's all about object's lifetime and shared ownership. If you create an object on stack in function, it will be destroyed when scope ends.

Why isn't it necessary to access QWidget by pointer in your example? Just because when main() 'ends', your program is finished, and widget may be destroyed.

Why is it necessary to access QWidget's children by pointer? Because if you want to ask QWidget to give you access to it's child, it can't give you a value, because it would be just a copy of an object. Moreover, if you pass a large object by value to QWidget, it needs to copy your object.