Cleaning up an STL list/vector of pointers

Question

What is the shortest chunk of C++ you can come up with to safely clean up a std::vector or std::list of pointers? (assuming you have to call delet

Answer 1

It's really dangerous to rely on code outside of the container to delete your pointers. What happens when the container is destroyed due to a thrown exception, for example?

I know you said you don't like boost, but please consider the boost pointer containers.

Answer 2

for(list<Foo*>::const_iterator it = foo_list.begin(); it != foo_list.end(); it++)
{
    delete *it;
} 
foo_list.clear();

There's a small reason why you would not want to do this - you're effectively iterating over the list twice.

std::list<>::clear is linear in complexity; it removes and destroys one element at a time within a loop.

Taking the above into consideration the simplest to read solution in my opinion is:

while(!foo_list.empty())
{
    delete foo_list.front();
    foo_list.pop_front();
}

Answer 3

If you allow C++11, you can do a very short version of Douglas Leeder's answer:

for(auto &it:foo_list) delete it; foo_list.clear();