char pointers in lists error

[Lowest0ne]

Why doesn't this work? Once I hit enter (cin.get()) I trigger a break point. I can omit line 26 and 29 and have no problems. I can omit line 10, and even with memory leaking at least I don't hit the break point.

#include <iostream>
#include <list>
using namespace std;

class Word{
private:
	char * word;
public:
	Word() :word(0) {};
	~Word() { delete [] word;}

	void makeWord(char* newWord){
		int length = 0;
		while (newWord[length] != '\0') length++;
		word = new char[length + 1];

		for (int i = 0; i <= length; i++){
			word[i] = newWord[i];
		}
	}

	char* getWord(){return word;};
};

int main(){
	list<Word> myWordList;
	Word myWord;
	myWord.makeWord("hello");
	myWordList.push_back(myWord);
	cin.get();
	return 0;
}

As an error, I get a pop-up window

Windows has triggered a breakpoint in Fun.exe.

This may be due to a corruption of the heap, which indicates a bug in Fun.exe or any of the DLLs it has loaded.

and Visual Studio 2010 opens up crtlib.c.

[shacktar]

This is happening because Word doesn't have a valid copy constructor. In the call to push_back, the list gets a copy of myWord. Since you didn't provide a copy constructor, the default is used so this copy would share the same char * word as myWord. When the list gets destroyed, that char * word gets deleted and that same char * word also gets deleted when main finishes (in the destructor of myWord).

Oh, and there are some built-in functions, i.e. strlen and strcpy for doing what you're doing in makeWord.

And you might as well give that object an overloaded assignment operator as well.

[Lowest0ne]

Got it working.

Thanks for the explanation, this all makes sense now. As for the class, this is just something I made to display my problem quickly.

Thanks again