Question

I have this question regarding memory allocation and deallocation in c++.
Here is the situation:
I have a method foo which allocates memory and then returns that object:

Object foo () {
  Object *a = new Object();
  // Do something with this object...
  return *a;
}

and another method which uses this returned object:

void bar () {
  Object a = foo();
  // Do something..
}

And my question is, at which point should i deallocate the memory I have allocated? When i return from the method foo, does the method bar get a copy of that object on its stack, or does it get access to that one object somewhere in memory?

Thanks!
Bart

Answer 1

You can’t deallocate that object. It’s lost. It’s a memory leak. You never should have (dynamically) allocated it in the first place. Your code should have looked like this:

Object foo () {
  Object a;
  // Do something with this object...
  return a;
}

When i return from the method foo, does the method bar get a copy of
that object on its stack, or does it get access to that one object
somewhere in memory?

It’s a copy of the still existing inaccessible object.