Question

As far as I know, std::string creates an identical array-copy of its content when you call the c_str()/data() methods (with or without the terminating NUL-char; it does not matter here). Anyway, does the object also take care of freeing this array or do I have to?

In short:

std::string hello("content");

const char* Ptr = hello.c_str();

// Use it....

delete[] Ptr;   //// Really ???

I just want to be on the safe side when it comes to memory allocation.

Answer 1

No, you don’t need to deallocate the ptr pointer.

ptr points to a nonmodifiable string located somewhere to an internal location (actually, this is an implementation detail of the compilers).

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Reference:

C++ documentation:

const char* c_str ( ) const;

Get C string equivalent

Generates a null-terminated sequence of characters (c-string) with the same content as the string object and returns it as a pointer to an array of characters.

A terminating null character is automatically appended.

The returned array points to an internal location with the required storage space for this sequence of characters plus its terminating null-character, but the values in this array should not be modified in the program and are only guaranteed to remain unchanged until the next call to a non-constant member function of the string object.