Question

I am creating a program that uses an array of objects declared with

Element * elements = new Element[number];

where an element is a class that has/needs a its own destructor.

when I go to delete this would I use just use array delete, and have the program worry about calling the destructor:

delete [] elements;

or do I call the destructor for each item explicitly with keyword delete:

for(int ii = 0; ii< ArraySize; ii++)
    delete elements[ii];
delete [] elements;

Note: I understand that I could probably use something like boost::ptr_vector, but I wanted similar to hashTable functionality (so the for loop would need additional information, but that is outside of the direct scope of this question) which is why I am using a traditional array. I would still like to know which behavior is needed to avoid memory leaks.

Answer 1

The first one. You should

delete [] elements;

The second one is incorrect and should give you errors if you try to compile it.