Question

I’m getting a segmentation fault which I believe is caused by the copy constructor. However, I can’t find an example like this one anywhere online. I’ve read about shallow copy and deep copy but I’m not sure which category this copy would fall under. Anyone know?

MyObject::MyObject{
    lots of things including const and structs, but no pointers
}
MyObject::MyObject( const MyObject& oCopy){
    *this = oCopy;//is this deep or shallow?
}
const MyObject& MyObject::operator=(const MyObject& oRhs){
    if( this != oRhs ){
        members = oRhs.members;
        .....//there is a lot of members
    }
    return *this;
}
MyObject::~MyObject(){
    //there is nothing here
}

Code:

const MyObject * mpoOriginal;//this gets initialized in the constructor

int Main(){
    mpoOriginal = new MyObject();
    return DoSomething();
}

bool DoSomething(){
    MyObject *poCopied = new MyObject(*mpoOriginal);//the copy
    //lots of stuff going on
    delete poCopied;//this causes the crash - can't step into using GDB
    return true;
}

EDIT: Added operator= and constructor

SOLVED: Barking up the wrong tree, it ended up being a function calling delete twice on the same object

Answer 1

Wow….

MyObject::MyObject( const MyObject& oCopy)
{
    *this = oCopy;//is this deep or shallow?
}

It is neither. It is a call to the assignment operator.
Since you have not finished the construction of the object this is probably ill-advised (though perfectly valid). It is more traditional to define the assignment operator in terms of the copy constructor though (see copy and swap idium).

const MyObject& MyObject::operator=(const MyObject& oRhs)
{
    if( this != oRhs ){
        members = oRhs.members;
        .....//there is a lot of members
    }
    return *this;
}

Basically fine, though normally the result of assignment is not cont.
But if you do it this way you need to divide up your processing a bit to make it exception safe. It should look more like this:

const MyObject& MyObject::operator=(const MyObject& oRhs)
{
    if( this == oRhs )
    {
        return *this;
    }
    // Stage 1:
    // Copy all members of oRhs that can throw during copy into temporaries.
    // That way if they do throw you have not destroyed this obbject.

    // Stage 2:
    // Copy anything that can **not** throw from oRhs into this object
    // Use swap on the temporaries to copy them into the object in an exception sage mannor.

    // Stage 3:
    // Free any resources.
    return *this;
}

Of course there is a simpler way of doing this using copy and swap idum:

MyObject& MyObject::operator=(MyObject oRhs)  // use pass by value to get copy
{
    this.swap(oRhs);
    return *this;
}

void MyObject::swap(MyObject& oRhs)  throws()
{
    // Call swap on each member.
    return *this;
}

If there is nothing to do in the destructor don’t declare it (unless it needs to be virtual).

MyObject::~MyObject(){
    //there is nothing here
}

Here you are declaring a pointer (not an object) so the constructor is not called (as pointers don;t have constructors).

const MyObject * mpoOriginal;//this gets initialized in the constructor

Here you are calling new to create the object.
Are you sure you want to do this? A dynamically allocated object must be destroyed; ostensibly via delete, but more usually in C++ you wrap pointers inside a smart pointer to make sure the owner correctly and automatically destroys the object.

int main()
{ //^^^^   Note main() has a lower case m

    mpoOriginal = new MyObject();
    return DoSomething();
}

But since you probably don’t want a dynamic object. What you want is automatic object that is destroyed when it goes out of scope. Also you probably should not be using a global variable (pass it as a parameter otherwise your code is working using the side affects that are associated with global state).

int main()
{
     const MyObject  mpoOriginal;
     return DoSomething(mpoOriginal);
}

You do not need to call new to make a copy just create an object (passing the object you want to copy).

bool DoSomething(MyObject const& data)
{
    MyObject   poCopied (data);     //the copy

    //lots of stuff going on
    // No need to delete.
    // delete poCopied;//this causes the crash - can't step into using GDB
    // When it goes out of scope it is auto destroyed (as it is automatic).

    return true;
}