Re: can I delete Upcast of a pointer ?

From:

Ron <ron.natalie@gmail.com>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++.moderated

Date:

Fri, 25 Sep 2009 06:28:30 CST

Message-ID:

<a91dd763-0f3d-4b32-b692-3c2ddd8a5486@d34g2000vbm.googlegroups.com>

On Sep 24, 8:32 pm, MicroEbi <Micro...@NoMail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Please consider:

Class Derived : Base
{
//virtual destructor

}

main
{
   Derived* d = new Derived;
   Base* pBase = d;

   delete pBase;//is it Ok or I should use delete (Derived*) pBase;

}

is it ok to delete Upcast of a pointer if derived class has not a
virtual destructor? what if the derived class has a virtual destructor?

Your program is ill-formed in a couple of ways. Class shouldn't be
capitalized, Derived* can't be converted to Base* (private
inheritance)
and main is missing the function params and return type.

But other than that. You can't delete a derived object through a
pointer to the base class unless the base class has a virtual
destructor. If you can figure out that it was a Derived class and
cast it back, it's ok (but ugly).

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