Re: deleting dynamically allocated objects in a container

From:
"subramanian100in@yahoo.com, India" <subramanian100in@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 9 Aug 2010 19:41:44 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<77ff62de-6850-4221-a97c-cd52a34ee032@g21g2000prn.googlegroups.com>
* "Daniel T." <danie...@earthlink.net> wrote:

In article
<4497e00d-a5dd-4c17-af38-8947767cb...@k1g2000prl.googlegroups.com>,
 "subramanian10...@yahoo.com, India" <subramanian10...@yahoo.com>

 wrote:

Suppose 'Test' is a class. I dynamically allocate few 'Test' objects
and push them into a vector<Test*>. I want to delete the dynamically
allocated 'Test' objects using a Standard Library Algorithm instead of
writing a hand-written 'for loop'.

Following is my attempt: (I am using cout statements in the ctor and
dtor only for understanding purpose).

#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>

using namespace std;

class Test
{
public:
        explicit Test(int arg = 0);
        ~Test();
private:
        int val;
};

inline Test::Test(int arg) : val(arg)
{
        cout << "From Test ctor: " << val << endl;
}

inline Test::~Test()
{
        cout << "From Test dtor: " << val << endl;
}

inline void delete_pointer(Test* & arg)
{
        delete arg;
        arg = 0;
}

int main()
{
        typedef vector<Test*> Container;
        Container c;
        c.push_back(new Test(100));
        c.push_back(new Test(200));
        c.push_back(new Test(300));
        for_each(c.begin(), c.end(), delete_pointer);
        // just to ensure the element values are zero, print them
        cout << c[0] << " " << c[1] << " " << c[2] << endl;

        return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

This porgram compiles fine with g++ and when run, produces the output:
From Test ctor: 100
From Test ctor: 200
From Test ctor: 300
From Test dtor: 100
From Test dtor: 200
From Test dtor: 300
0 0 0

My solution seems to work. But is there a better solution ?


Here is Stroustrup's solution (from TC++PL)

template<class T> T* delete_ptr(T* p) { delete p; return 0; }

void purge(deque<Shape*>& s)
{
   transform(s.begin(), s.end() ,s.begin(), &delete_ptr);

}


I get compilation error for this 'transform' call. Here is the
complete modified program z.cpp:

#include <cstdlib>
#include <iostream>
#include <vector>
#include <algorithm>

using namespace std;

class Test
{
public:
        explicit Test(int arg = 0);
        ~Test();
private:
        int val;
};

inline Test::Test(int arg) : val(arg)
{
        cout << "From Test ctor: " << val << endl;
}

inline Test::~Test()
{
        cout << "From Test dtor: " << val << endl;
}

template <typename T>
T* delete_ptr(T* p)
{
        delete p;

        return 0;
}

int main()
{
        typedef vector<Test*> Container;
        Container c;
        c.push_back(new Test(100));
        c.push_back(new Test(200));
        c.push_back(new Test(300));
        transform(c.begin(), c.end(), c.begin(), &delete_ptr);
        // just to ensure the element values are zero, print them
        cout << c[0] << " " << c[1] << " " << c[2] << endl;

        return EXIT_SUCCESS;
}

I compiled this program with g++3.4.3 as
g++ -std=c++98 -pedantic -Wall -Wextra z.cpp

It generated the following compilation error:

z.cpp: In function `int main()':
z.cpp:42: error: no matching function for call to
`transform(__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<Test**, std::vector<Test*,
std::allocator<Test*> > >, __gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<Test**,
std::vector<Test*, std::allocator<Test*> > >,
__gnu_cxx::__normal_iterator<Test**, std::vector<Test*,
std::allocator<Test*> > >, <unknown type>)'

Kindly help me to make this modified program compile fine and produce
the expected result which I stated at the beginning of OP.

Thanks
V.Subramanian

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