[johndeas]

Hi,

i am trying to understand generic programming concepts used in OpenFOAM, and have a basic question in C++.

suppose I have a "employee" base class which has virtual functions, and two derived classes:

employeeExportA:public employee

and

employeeExportB:public employee

I want to have a pointer to the employee base class called myEmployee, and be able to choose at runtime wether it points to a employeeExportA or employeeExportB object. I tried this code:

    auto_ptr<employee> myEmployee;
    if (inputString == "A")
    {
         myEmployee = auto_ptr<employeeExportA>(new employeeExportA(4,5));
    if (inputString == "B")
    {
         myEmployee = auto_ptr<employeeExportB>(new employeeExportB(4,5));;
    }

My program compiles, but I would like to know, since the auto_ptr myEmployee has been created with the base class, will it be able to clean all the memory created by the "new" operator applied to a derived class, or will it only clean the part of the object in common with the base and let the remaining leaking ?

[gschaider]

Originally Posted by johndeas

Hi,

i am trying to understand generic programming concepts used in OpenFOAM, and have a basic question in C++.

suppose I have a "employee" base class which has virtual functions, and two derived classes:

employeeExportA:public employee

and

employeeExportB:public employee

I want to have a pointer to the employee base class called myEmployee, and be able to choose at runtime wether it points to a employeeExportA or employeeExportB object. I tried this code:

    auto_ptr<employee> myEmployee;
    if (inputString == "A")
    {
         myEmployee = auto_ptr<employeeExportA>(new employeeExportA(4,5));
    if (inputString == "B")
    {
         myEmployee = auto_ptr<employeeExportB>(new employeeExportB(4,5));;
    }

My program compiles, but I would like to know, since the auto_ptr myEmployee has been created with the base class, will it be able to clean all the memory created by the "new" operator applied to a derived class, or will it only clean the part of the object in common with the base and let the remaining leaking ?

That depends. Google for "virtual destructor"