Hi
I see that all stl components have destructors.
string s;
s.~string();
But i know that we don't need to delete stl componenets.I read all stl components automatically delete themself.Is this wrong?
If true what is the function of destructors in STL?
Thanks...
You should never call a destructor, it will call itself automatically. I can't think of a good example where you'd need to call a destructor manually. What you heard is most probably that STL containers allocate and deallocate memory automatically and not that the objects themselves are deallocated automatically (which they are, anyway).
Edit: FYI, any class/structure has a destructor.
When an object falls out of scope or gets deleted, it's destructor is called. It's the same for STL containers. the destructor does all the cleaup; that's what it's purpose is.
Try and allocate 100 objects on the heap and stick them in a vector. At shutdown, simply call vector.clear() and watch what happens.
Last edited by VirtualAce; 08-09-2006 at 05:58 AM.
>I can't think of a good example where you'd need to call a destructor manually.
The only time I can think of would be in conjunction with placement new, but that's a very rare and specific situation.
>I read all stl components automatically delete themself.
Yes, the destructor is called automatically when the lifetime of an object ends.
My best code is written with the delete key.
