If I delete a class, are its member variables automatically deleted?

Question

I have been researching, and nothing relevant has come up, so I came here.

I am trying to avoid memory leaks, so I am wondering:

Say I have class MyCla

Answer 1

When delete mc is executed, the compiler calls the destructor of the object (MyClass::~MyClass()) and then deallocates the memory associated with it.

The default destructor (when you don't declare your own) calls the destructors of all member variables, in order from last to first by declaration (that is, in this case, c, then b, then a). Since those members in this example are POD types (they do not have a destructor), no work is done.

Answer 2

Variables inside of a class have class scope and are destroyed when the class is. The only thing you need to worry about is pointers -- those will need to be addressed appropriately in your destructor.

Answer 3

For your specific example, the answer is yes. That's because you allocated the member variables on the stack. If you had used new to allocate memory for the member variables the answer would be no and would require you to explicitly delete the member variables in the class' destructor.

class MyClass(): heapVariabl(NULL)
{  
   MyClass()
   {}

   ~MyClass()
   {
     delete heapVariable; 
   }   

   int a, b;     
   int[2] c;     
   int *heapVariable;
   void setVariables()      
   {         
     a, b = 0;       
     heapVariable = new int; // <- requires deletion in destructor to free memory
     *heapVariable = 0;
     for (int i = 0; i < 2; i++)          
     {             
       c[i] = 3;          
     }     
   } 


} 

Answer 4

Your three variables were not allocated with new so there would be no need to delete them at all.

They would be destructed when your class is deleted (as they were allocated when your class was newd), but that's not the same as being deleted.

Answer 5

The rule is very simple: every object created with new must be destroyed exactly once with delete; every array created with new[] must be destroyed exactly once with delete[]; everything else must not be deleted. So your code is correct; you are deleting mc after creating it with new, and not deleting the members which were not created with new.

Applying the rule can be quite tricky when the program flow gets complicated (especially when exceptions are involved); for that reason, it is much better not to delete objects yourself, but to immediately use the result of new to initialise a smart pointer to manage the object for you.

Answer 6

delete will reclaim the memory that your object contains. If your type maintains pointers to dynamically allocated memory then you will need to clean those up inside of your destructor.

As for your specific quesiton:

after I call delete mc, will a, b, and all the contents of c be deleted as well? Or will I have to do that explicitly in the destructor of MyClass?

They will be cleaned up for you as they were not allocated dynamically.