Exceptional C++: 47 Engineering Puzzles, Programming Problems, and Solutions

Chapter 16. Writing Exception-Safe Code—Part 9

Difficulty: 8

How well do you understand the innocuous expression delete[] p? What are its implications when it comes to exception safety?

And now, for the topic you've been waiting for: “Destructors That Throw and Why They're Evil.”

Consider the expression delete[] p;, where p points to a valid array on the free store, which was properly allocated and initialized using new[].

1. What does delete[] p; really do?

2. How safe is it? Be as specific as possible.

Solution

This brings us to a key topic, namely the innocent looking delete[] p;. What does it really do? And how safe is it?

Destructors That Throw and Why They're ...