Question

I was trying to learn basic C++ operator overloading concepts. I have a class mystring and related code as shown below. In functions used to overload ‘+’ operator, where can I free the memory to avoid memory leaks.

#include <iostream>


class mystring
{
    char *ptr;

    public:

   mystring(char *str = "")
   {
      ptr = new char[strlen(str) + 1]
      strcpy(ptr,str);

   } 

   mystring operator +(mystring s)
   {
      char *str = new char[strlen(ptr) + strlen(s.ptr) + 1];//where should this memory be freed
      strcpy(str,ptr);
      strcat(str,s.ptr);
      return mystring v1(str);
   }
   ~mystring()
   {
      delete [] ptr; 
   }
};

int main()
{
   mystring a="Hello",b="World",c;

  c = a + b;

}

Answer 1

Simple fix:

   mystring operator +(mystring s) 
   { 
      char *str = new char[strlen(ptr) + strlen(s.ptr) + 1];//where should this memory be freed 
      strcpy(str,ptr); 
      strcat(str,s.ptr); 
      mystring v1(str);
      delete[] str;
      return v1
   }

Or have a private constructor

MyStr(char *str, bool dummy)
{
   ptr =  str;
}

then

....strcat().
   mystring v1(str, false);
   return v1;