CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++pointersmemory-management
L-caesar
L-caesar

Reputation: 75

pointers,deallocation and vector in c++

I want to know that should i explicitly deallocate the pointers which are erase from a vector by myvector.erase(); .

For example;

Class Sample1{
   public:
         removeSample2(Sample2 * a)
         {
             if(// if i find that a is in my sampleList1 vector with index i ){
                   // should i call here delete or something like that for a pointer ?
                   sampleList1.erase(sampleList1.begin()+i);
              }
         }

   private:
      vector<Int *> sampleList1;

            } 

Class Sample2{
     public:
           // not important areas
     private:
          Sample1 * example;
             }

Upvotes: 1

Views: 88

Answers (2)

c-smile
c-smile

Reputation: 27460

You shall delete the element by yourself. vector did not allocate that element and so it will not free it.

Upvotes: 0

David Schwartz
David Schwartz

Reputation: 182753

There's no way we could possibly know, since we don't know what you're trying to do. But the basic answer is:

  1. If the collection logically owns the things in it, you are doing it all wrong. Never use ordinary collections of ordinary pointers for this purpose. Things will go horribly wrong if you, for example, copy the collection. (Either use ordinary collections of smart pointers or collections specifically designed to hold pointers and manage the lifetimes of the objects in them.)

  2. If the collection does not own the things in it, then do not delete pointers from the collection. That will cause other code that uses those pointers to access an object after it has been deleted.

Upvotes: 2

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