"delete []" in destructor causes assertion failure

I have a class, whose constructor makes a public pointer point to an array (allocated with "new" by a protected member function) of another class. When I attempt to delete this array from the destructor, I get an assertion failure in "dbgdel.cpp" - aka the code behind the "delete" operator (right?). When I don't delete the array, I (of course) am left with a memory leak. So I'd like to get this to work. Here's the code ("//..." indicates omissions of code that seems to be irrelevant):

Code:

---

class path_coord
{public: unsigned int x, y; path_coord(){x = -1; y = -1;}}; // -1 "wraps" to maximum value
//...

class pathroute
{

protected:
        mazemaker * map;

public:

        path_coord * path;
        unsigned long length;

        pathroute(unsigned int start_x, unsigned int start_y, unsigned int dest_x, unsigned int dest_y, unsigned int map_width, unsigned int map_height, mazemaker * ptrMap)
        {
                map = ptrMap;
                path = AStar(start_x, start_y, dest_x, dest_y, map_width, map_height);
        }

        ~pathroute()
        {
                delete [] path;
        }
protected:
        //...
        path_coord * createReturn(node * end)
        {

                node * currentnode = end;
                unsigned long numnodes = 1;
                while(currentnode != NULL)
                {
                        numnodes++;
                        currentnode = currentnode->parent;
                }

                path_coord * ret = new path_coord[numnodes];

                currentnode = end;
                unsigned long currentindex = 0;
                while(currentnode != NULL)
                {
                        ret[currentindex].x = currentnode -> x;
                        ret[currentindex].y = currentnode -> y;
                        currentindex++;
                        currentnode = currentnode->parent;
                }

                length = numnodes - 1;
                return ret;

        }
        //...
};

---

Can anybody tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thanks in advance for any help...

EDIT: I realize one thing that wasn't clear in the previous post is that createReturn is called by AStar, and AStar returns whatever createReturn returned, after cleaning up, like so:

Code:

---

path_coord * ret;
//...
ret = createReturn(makenode); //Makenode is a pointer to the last node that was made and put in the open list.
deletelist(open);
deletelist(closed);
return ret;

---

provide your own assignment operator and copy constructor because you are using dynamic memory the compiler supplied functions will cause problems.

Thanks, I just did a test, and that does seem to be the problem. I have a global function (for debugging purposes) that, given a pathroute object and a filename, dumps the contents of the path array into that file. That appears to be the thing that had been giving me problems. By changing it's pathroute argument to a reference (thereby removing the need to copy the object) I eliminated the error. This doesn't solve the problem, really; I still will need to be able to copy and assign pathroutes, but at least now I know what the problem is. So now I, like you said, need to write my own operators. Thanks for pointing me in the right direction.