Question

In my class, I have a member variable std::vector<node*> children

Does the following class member function create a memory leak?

//adds a child node
{
    node* child = new node("blah","blah","blah");
    child->Set_Parent(this);
    children.push_back(child);  //<- Is this ok?
}

The vector makes a copy of the pointer and I have two pointers to the same memory,
and then the original pointer goes out of scope, right?

This may be simple and obvious, but I would just like to confirm my assumption.
thanks

Answer 1

It’s not a leak … yet. However, if the vector goes out of scope, or you erase, pop_back or do something else that removes elements from the vector, without first deleteing the element that you’re removing you’ll have a leak on your hands.

The right way to do this is to change from using a vector<node *> to vector<unique_ptr<node>>. Your code will change to

//adds a child node
{
    node* child = new node("blah","blah","blah");
    child->Set_Parent(this);
    children.push_back(std::unique_ptr<node>(child));
}

Or use boost::ptr_vector<node> if you can use Boost.