Question

I have class A, then I made a vector of class A;
std::vector<A> b, and i initialize it correctly.

I have one member function of another class, which has a member pointer which point to a
vector of A;

In this class, I also have a member function, and inside this member function.
I fist build a reference to the vector of class A, and initialize it use the deference of the pointer, The reason is the member reference can only assign value once, so I use pointer, but inside the member function, the syntax of reference is more clean.

the question is, in the member function, if i delete the reference to that vector, does it only delete the reference or delete the whole container the pointer point to. The container contain object not pointer.

Thanks

Answer 1

When the reference goes out of scope it’s not going to destroy the original object.

I assume this is the situation:

class A {};

class B
{
     std::vector<A>* pA;

public:
     B( std::vector<A>* p ): pA(p) {}

     void foo()
     {
          std::vector<A>& arr = *pA;
          //do stuff with arr
          // Arr and pA are still valid after the end of this function
     }
};

int main()
{
    std::vector<A> Arr;
    Arr.push_back( A() );

    B b( &Arr );
    b.foo();
}