pointers and memory management

[stuartd]

Hi,

Having fallen into the trap of allocating memory, and never freeing it, I have found 'auto_ptr' which handles some of these problems of memory allocation/freeing for me.

Is this a good tool to use, or not? Are there other template classes which do similar things? Can anyone recommend a source where I can read more about this?

Thanks

 

[amarevu]

Use
free() in C or
delete in C++ or
at the end of the programme use fflush(stdio).

Amar.

 

[chipperMDW]

Yes, auto_ptr is a very good tool to use. Theoretically, using it, you should never have to use the

delete

operator (except when you're writing a class). Anything that keeps you from having to remember to write that line of code is a good thing.

There are other "cool" template classes that come with C++, but none are really similar to auto_ptr. If you want to read more about these (which include stuff like function objects and allocators), you can search online for the C++ draft Standard. It's not the real thing, but it's pretty close, and it'll tell you about most of the library facilities that come with standard-compliant compilers.

Another source, and one that's probably more of what you're looking for, is

http://www.boost.org.

This is a collection of libraries written by people connected with the C++ Standard, and its contents have a good chance of becoming standard in the future. One of the libraries is a smart pointer library, and it contains, among other things, scoped_ptr and shared_ptr. These are auto_ptr's little-known (and unstandard) cousins that could have made it into the Standard, but didn't.