Destructors
Explore the role of destructors in C++ classes to understand how they automatically free memory when objects are no longer needed. This lesson helps you learn to implement destructors to manage resources effectively, avoid memory leaks, and utilize smart pointers for safer memory handling.
We'll cover the following...
What is a Destructor?
A destructor is the opposite of a constructor. It is called when the object of a class is no longer in use. The object is destroyed and the memory it occupied is now free for future use.
C++ does not have transparent garbage collection like Java. Hence, in order to efficiently free memory, we must specify our own destructor for a class.
In this destructor, we can specify the additional operations which need to be performed when a class object is deleted.
A class destructor can be created in a similar way to the constructor, except that the destructor is preceded by the ~ keyword.
Explicit Garbage Collection
A small degree of garbage collection can be easily achieved through smart pointers. A smart pointer, the ...