Question

I have this function:

char* ReadBlock(fstream& stream, int size)
{
    char* memblock;
    memblock = new char[size];
    stream.read(memblock, size);
    return(memblock);
}

The function is called every time I have to read bytes from a file. I think it allocates new memory every time I use it but how can I free the memory once I have processed the data inside the array? Can I do it from outside the function? Processing data by allocating big blocks gives better performance than allocating and deleting small blocks of data?

Thank you very much for your help!

Answer 1

Dynamic arrays are freed using delete[]:

char* block = ReadBlock(...);
// ... do stuff
delete[] block;

Ideally however you don’t use manual memory management here:

std::vector<char> ReadBlock(std::fstream& stream, int size) {
    std::vector<char> memblock(size);
    stream.read(&memblock[0], size);
    return memblock;
}