Question

I have a class which has a struct with pointers as one of its member.

struct group {
   void *v1, 
   void *v2;
};


class A {
  A (group& handle) 
  : m_handle(handle)
 private :
   group m_handle;
};

There are no pointer members in class A. I don’t see any issue (such as memory leaks) when no destructor is defined in A. I have learnt that when object A goes out of scope, destructor of A is called and if there are member classes present in A, then their destructors are called and so on. So, what happens to a member struct as m_handle above – do they have anything similar to destructor and how are the two void pointers in struct group deleted when object A goes out of scope?

Answer 1

Yes, v1 and v2 could be leaked, if they aren’t deallocated in some other part of your program. So, in the destructor of A you can delete v1 and v2 (if it’s appropriate to), or you can just add a destructor to group (in c++, a struct is exactly like a class except for default visibility – stuff is public by default rather than private) and delete them there. Of course, this depends on appropriateness (maybe some other thing allocated and owns v1 and v2).