Question

I can’t remember what it is called, but I know i can do it in Java.
Suppose I have the following:

class Foo
{
public:
    Foo() {};
    void bar() {};
};

I want to do this:

int main() {
    (new Foo).bar();
}

But it doesn’t seem to work. Is there a similar way to do this without having to do:

int main() {
    Foo foobar;
    foobar.bar();
}

Answer 1

new dynamically-allocates memory and returns a pointer. Class members are obtained using the indirection operator ->. I don’t think this is what you’re looking for as you run the risk of causing a memory leak. Simply calling the constructor of Foo allows us to do what we want:

Foo().bar();

By calling the constructor of Foo, we create a temporary object off of which we can obtain its data members. This is preferred over pointers as we don’t have to deal with memory leaks and deletion of the pointer.