Question

I have a class MyClassA. In its constructur, I am passing the pointer to instance of class B. I have some very basic questions related to this.

(1) First thing , is the following code correct? ( the code that makes a shallow copy and the code in methodA())

MyClassA::MyClassA(B *b){
    this.b = b;
}

void MyClassA::methodA(){

    int i; 
    i = b.getFooValue();
    // Should I rather be using the arrow operator here??
    // i = b->getFooValue()
}

(2) I am guessing I don’t need to worry about deleting memory for MyClassA.b in the destructor ~MyClassA() as it is not allocated. Am I right?

thanks

Update: Thank you all for your answers! MyclassA is only interested in accessing the methods of class B. It is not taking ownership of B.

Answer 1

1)
this.b = b;

Here you pass a pointer to an instance of B. As Mac notes, this should be:

this->b = b;

b.getFooValue();

This should be b->getFooValue(), because MyClassA::b is a pointer to B.

2) This depends of how you define what MyClassA::b is. If you specify (in code comments) that MyClassA takes over ownership over the B instance passed in MyClassA’s constructor, then you’ll need to delete b in MyClassA’s destructor. If you specify that it only keeps a reference to b, without taking over the ownership, then you don’t have to.

PS. Regrettably, in your example there is no way to make ownership explicit other than in code documentation.