#ifndef _H5RefCounter_H
#define _H5RefCounter_H

#ifndef H5_NO_NAMESPACE
namespace H5 {
#endif

class RefCounter {
   public:
	// Creates a reference counter to be used by an HDF5 object
	RefCounter();

        int getCounter () const;
        void increment();
        void decrement();

	// this bool function is used to determine whether to close an
	// HDF5 object when there are no more reference to that object
	bool noReference();

	~RefCounter();

   private:
	int counter; // keeps track of number of copies of an object
};
#ifndef H5_NO_NAMESPACE
}
#endif
#endif