CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c++arrays
asad ullah shahid
asad ullah shahid

Reputation: 1

Difference between delete[i] array and delete array[i]

I actually want to describe my problem first. In my code I've a base class with name Employee then I've 4 more classes. I wanted to make my class abstract (basically i was using polymorphism concept). I made a pointer array with type of base class and add objects in it(unnamed objects on heap). Now i wanted to deallocate objects. I used delete[i] array and delete array[i] both were working(one at a time). Can someone please explain the difference between both of them? Why both were working if delete[i] is wrong? I was using delete[i] array or delete array[i] with for loop.

main is like:

Employee *arr[10];
arr[0] =new SalariedEmployee ("first name","last name","number",200);

now i want to delete this object

Upvotes: 0

Views: 72

Answers (1)

Lukas-T
Lukas-T

Reputation: 11340

delete[i] array;

is wrong in standard C++. But it acutally compiles on msvc (demo). It's a compiler specific extension (thanks to Blastfurnace for pointing this out).

The correct version is 

delete array[i];

to destroy an object that was allocated on the heap and free the corresponding memory.

However, manual memory management can become quite hard sometimes. So the solution in modern C++ would be something like

std::array<std::uniqe_ptr<Employee>, 10> array;

for a fixed size array with pointers to Employee's.

Upvotes: 3

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