Question

I defined a class foo as follows:

class foo {
private:
   static int objcnt;
public:
   foo() {
       if(objcnt==8)
           throw outOfMemory("No more space!");
       else
          objcnt++;
   }

   class outOfMemory {
   public:
       outOfMemory(char* msg) { cout << msg << endl;}
   };

   ~foo() { cout << "Deleting foo." << endl; objcnt--;}
};
int foo::objcnt = 0;

And here’s the main function:

int main() {
    try {
            foo* p = new foo[3];
            cout << "p in try " << p << endl;
            foo* q = new foo[7];
        }catch(foo::outOfMemory& o) {
           cout << "Out-of-memory Exception Caught." << endl;
        }
}

It is obvious that the line “foo* q = new foo[7];” only creates 5 objects successfully, and on the 6th object an Out-of-memory exception is thrown. But it turns out that there’s only 5 destructor calls, and destrcutor is not called for the array of 3 objects stored at the position p points to. So I am wondering why? How come the program only calls the destructor for those 5 objects?

Answer 1

Destructors are only called for the fully constructed objects – those are objects whose constructors completed normally. That only happens automatically if an exception is thrown while new[] is in progress. So in your example the destructors will be run for five objects fully constructed during q = new foo[7] running.

Since new[] for the array that p points to completed successfully that array is now handled to your code and the C++ runtime doesn’t care of it anymore – no destructors will be run unless you do delete[] p.