Question

While doing my programming assignments, I seem to be stumbling over basic C++ concepts. I found the bug in my program and it was caused by my destructor running more times than I expected. Here is a code sample demonstrating what I am doing wrong, down to the bare essentials.

#include <iostream>
using namespace std;

class A
{
public:
    A(int num)
    {
        number = num;
        cout << "A constructed with number " << number << ".\n";
    }
    ~A()
    {
        cout << "A destructed with number " << number << ".\n";
    }
private:
    int number;
};

class B
{
public:
    B(A pa)
        : a(pa)
    {
        cout << "B constructor run.\n";
    }
    ~B()
    {
        cout << "B destructor run.\n";
    }
private:
    A a;
};


int main()
{
    A foo(7);
    {
        B bar(foo);
    }
    //Pause the program.
    system("pause");
}

What I expect to happen is A foo(7); allocates space on the stack for an A object named foo and call the constructor, passing 7. It assigns 7 to number and prints output indicating the the constructor ran. Now B bar(foo); allocates space on the stack for a B object named bar and calls the constructor, passing foo by value, which is just a container for an int. The constructor assigns the A parameter passed to it to it’s own private data member a, and prints output to the screen.

Now, when bar goes out of scope at the closing curly brace, I expect bar‘s destructor to be called, which prints output to the screen, then calls the destructor for its data members, namely A a. That destructor prints output to the screen, and discards the int number that it was containing.

What I expect the output should be:

A constructed with number 7.
B constructor run.
B destructor run.
A destructed with number 7.
//Destructors should be called in the reverse order of their construction right?

The actual output:

A constructed with number 7.
B constructor run.
A destructed with number 7. //This is unexpected.
B destructor run.
A destructed with number 7.

What is causing that extra destruction?

Answer 1

Obviously it comes from member data A a; of class B. I guess your doubt is that why not see any construct output from A, because it’s constructed with default copy-ctor for class A, It’s better to add one copy-ctor for class A, so that you will see the construct procedure.

A(const A& a)
{
     number = a.number;
     cout << "A copy-constructed with number " << number << ".\n";
}