Question

I could use some clarification on destructors.

I understand that if an object contains a pointer to allocated memory, then the object’s destructor should call delete on that pointer. But what if an object contains an object that contains a pointer to allocated memory, such as a string?:

class Foo
{
    string bar;
};

Foo* foo = new Foo;
delete foo;

Is there aught I must do to ensure that the underlying char[] in the string is deallocated?

Answer 1

The string type’s destructor is responsible for cleaning up any resource it owns. Your object’s destructor will call the destructors of member objects.