Question

#ifndef UNICODE
#define UNICODE
#endif

#include <iostream>
#include <Windows.h>
#include <queue>

using namespace std;

void addSomeContent(queue<TCHAR*> &s)
{
    static int counter=0;
    TCHAR* buffer = new TCHAR[250]; //Allocate memory on heap

    wsprintf(buffer,TEXT("foo%d"),counter);

    s.push(buffer);
    counter++;

    if(counter < 10)
    addSomeContent(s);

}


int main (void)
{
    queue<TCHAR*> strings; 

    addSomeContent(strings);

    while(!strings.empty()) 
    {   
        wcout<<strings.front()<<endl;
        strings.pop();
    }

    //Here I want to destroy the "buffer" from the function "addSomeContent"
    wcout<<TEXT("Memory has been cleaned!\n");

    system("pause");
    return (0);
}

If I had deleted the wide char array at the end of the function, I couldn’t have processed my queue which references to it. Now, my simple program compiles and works fine, but obviously keeping a garbage in heap isn’t considered as a safe programming practice.

How to delete the “buffer” just after using it last time?

Answer 1

You can use a queue<unique_ptr<TCHAR[]>> to avoid memory deallocation entirely, or you can simply deallocate the memory before you remove it from the queue like so:

delete[] strings.front();
strings.pop();