Question

Consider the following situation:

Class** array = new Class*[8];
array[1] = new Class(1,2);

Is just doing “delete[ ] array” sufficient or should I precede the former with “delete array[1]“. I am not completely comfortable with memory management.

Answer 1

Every time you call new[], you have to call delete[] on the pointer to deallocate. Every time you call new, you have to call delete.

In your case, you call new twice. array[1] contains a pointer to a class allocated with new, so it must be deallocated with delete. And array is a pointer to an array allocated with new[], so it must be freed with delete[].

Of course, you could have saved yourself this headache by simple declaring the array like this:

Class array[8];
array[1] = Class(1,2);

no dynamic memory allocation means no need to call delete.

Or using std::vector:

std::vector<Class> array(8);
array[1] = Class(1,2);