Question

I have a function as below

int* readFile(string InputPath)
{
    int *myvar = new int[10]; //The file has 10 lines (Using heap)

    ifstream inFile;

    inFile.open(InputPath.c_str(), ios::in);

    if (inFile.fail())
    {
        cout << "Error reading the input file ";
        cout << InputPath << ".";
        exit(0);
    }
    string fileLine;

    while (getline(inFile, fileLine))
    {
       myvar[i]=toint(fileLine); //will be converted to int!
    }
    ;
    inFile.close();



    return myvar;
}:

How can I free the heap (myvar)?
In general, what is the best method to return such array?

Answer 1

It clearly becomes the responsibility of the caller, to call delete[] on it. Note that this means the caller has to know that the returned pointer is allocated with new[], which isn’t exactly optimal.

You should return a std::vector<int> instead, which makes it all so much simpler.