releasing resources allocated for a particular object

[ssylee]

For example, I have a BITMAPINFO* and a BYTE* object to release the
resources. Would the most bulletproof way of doing so involve checking
to see if they are null, then if they are not, invoke a free()
function call on that and make sure that they point to null?

 

[news.aioe.org]

For example, I have a BITMAPINFO* and a BYTE* object to release the
resources. Would the most bulletproof way of doing so involve checking
to see if they are null, then if they are not, invoke a free()
function call on that and make sure that they point to null?

Hmm... start with "For example"?

If this is C++ typically you would use "delete" and you can pass a null to the
delete operator.

The best practice is to make a certain component responsible for freeing memory
for certain objects. So resetting a freed pointer variable to NULL to safeguard
from possible multiple freeing of memory clearly is not a good programming practice.

 

[Jianwei Sun]

Hello ssylee,

For example, I have a BITMAPINFO* and a BYTE* object to release the
resources. Would the most bulletproof way of doing so involve checking
to see if they are null, then if they are not, invoke a free()
function call on that and make sure that they point to null?

The C++ way is probably that you wrap the resource in the class, and then
release it in the destructor.

free() is more traditional class c way of doing things.