Creating an easy to maintain copy constructor

Question

Consider the following class:

class A {

char *p;
int a, b, c, d;

public:
   A(const &A);
};

Note that I have to define a copy constructor

Answer 1

While I agree with others saying that you should wrap the pointer in its own class for RAII and let the compiler synthesise the copy contructor, destructor and assignment operator there is a way around your problem: declare (and define) private static function which will do whatever is needed and common for different constructors and call it from there.