Question

I have method that takes in a const vector reference. I want to put a mutable version of the vector on the heap and return that

This compiles but I am unsure if it is actually doing what I think. I am not sure if I am getting lucky with the memory here:

vector<Type> *vect = new vector<Type>;
*vect = vectReference;

Answer 1

It’s OK, you made dynamically allocated vector copy. But the same could be done in more short way using copy constructor instead of default constructor and assignment operator:

vector<Type> *vect = new vector<Type>(vectReference);

Also would like to suggest to use smart pointer instead of raw one: std::unique_ptr or std::shared_ptr – depending on your code semantics.