Will this C++ code cause a memory leak (casting array new)

Question

I have been working on some legacy C++ code that uses variable length structures (TAPI), where the structure size will depend on variable length strings. The structures are allo

Answer 1

Yes it will cause a memory leak.

See this except from C++ Gotchas: http://www.informit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=30642 for why.

Raymond Chen has an explanation of how vector new and delete differ from the scalar versions under the covers for the Microsoft compiler... Here: http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/2004/02/03/66660.aspx

IMHO you should fix the delete to:

delete [] pStruct;

rather than switching to malloc/free, if only because it's a simpler change to make without making mistakes ;)

And, of course, the simpler to make change that I show above is wrong due to the casting in the original allocation, it should be

delete [] reinterpret_cast(pStruct);

so, I guess it's probably as easy to switch to malloc/free after all ;)