Reputation: 4380
If I have a class with an array of pointers to another class Vehicle :
class List {
public:
//stuff goes here
private:
Vehicle ** vehicles;
}
If I now write the destructor of the class List
, do I manually iterate over the array (I know how many items are in the array) and delete
every pointer to a vehicle, or will C++ automatically call the destructors of all the Vehicles in the array?
(Like it does if there's a private string/... in the class or if it would be a STL container of Vehicle pointers)
EDIT:
I forgot about delete [] vehicles
, but if I would do that, would it also delete the memory used by all the vehicles in the array, or would it just delete the memory used by the pointers?
Upvotes: 4
Views: 3557
Reputation: 92864
If i have a class with an array of pointers to another class Vehicle :
Vehicle ** vehicles;
vehicles
is not an array of pointers rather its a pointer to pointer to a Vehicle
type.
An array of pointers would be defined something like Vehicle* vehicles[N]
.
do i manually iterate over the array (i know how many items are in the array) and delete every pointer to a vehicle
Yes! You dont want your code to leak memory do you?
I would recommend using Boost::scoped_ptr
from the Boost library. Moreover if you compiler supports C++0x you can also use std::unique_ptr
Upvotes: 2
Reputation: 24561
If the List owns Vehicle objects (creates them in the constructor) you need to delete every single one and then delete the array of pointers itself.
Upvotes: 3
Reputation: 14392
You have to delete all the entries in the array AND delete the array. There are methods in C++ (STL) to avoid this: use a vector, so you don't have to delete the array. Use scoped_ptr/shared_ptr per Vehicle, so you don't have to delete the vehicles.
Upvotes: 7
Reputation: 38912
You have to manually iterate over vehicles and delete
each and every of them.
Upvotes: 0