Thread: Cannot delete objects

Hello, again. I'm having problems with the Visual Studio compiler. I've defined an "A" class and then created an "A" object "a" inside of the main function. But whenever I attempt to "delete a;" the compiler spits out this error:

Code:

C2440: 'delete' : cannot convert from 'A' to 'void *'

Definition of Class:

Code:

class A
{
public:
	int i;
};

Inside of main function:

Code:

A a;
delete a;

I looked this up on MSDN and the description for C2440 is very varied but doesn't contain the word "delete" anywhere on there. So what am I doing wrong here?

So, you're saying it's impossible to delete variables that aren't dynamically allocated?

why would you want to delete variables that are not allocated with new operator? The system will delete them when the function returns to its caller.

When a local variable goes out of scope it is destructed. If you want a local variable to be destructed earlier than the end of the function or other block of code it is declared in, just add an extra scope. One possible example is a file stream. Since the file stream is closed automatically when it goes out of scope, you might want to have it close earlier to free the memory used from opening the file. This example isn't really the best way to do things, since often it would be better to separate the lone function into multiple functions, but it demonstrates the idea.

Code:

void loadData(MyDataContainer& mdc)
{
  {
    std::ifstream ifs("LotsOfUserData.txt");

    // ... read data into mdc

  } // ifs goes out of scope and the first big file is closed.

  {
    std::ifstream ifs("LotsOfObjectData.txt");

    // ... read data into mdc

  } // ifs goes out of scope and the second big file is closed.
}

Originally Posted by Daved

When a local variable goes out of scope it is destructed. If you want a local variable to be destructed earlier than the end of the function or other block of code it is declared in, just add an extra scope. One possible example is a file stream. Since the file stream is closed automatically when it goes out of scope, you might want to have it close earlier to free the memory used from opening the file. This example isn't really the best way to do things, since often it would be better to separate the lone function into multiple functions, but it demonstrates the idea.

Code:

void loadData(MyDataContainer& mdc)
{
  {
    std::ifstream ifs("LotsOfUserData.txt");

    // ... read data into mdc

  } // ifs goes out of scope and the first big file is closed.

  {
    std::ifstream ifs("LotsOfObjectData.txt");

    // ... read data into mdc

  } // ifs goes out of scope and the second big file is closed.
}

Ah, I understand now. Thanks for your patience. I'm used to scripting languages like Javascript so the transition over to C++ is rough for me. But I understand now.

I was using this in an example I was building. Basically it would add an item to a linked list whenever it was constructed and delete it to test the destructor. I just assumed I could use the delete statement to free up the memory of local or global variables.