Destructor + inheritance causing program to crash after running?

[ocprodigy]

Hi,

I have a class which dynamically allocates memory for three data arrays, and as such in the destructor I told it to delete those data arrays.

However, when I've created a new class, and inherited the previous class - it will always crash AFTER running the program, unless I don't have the previous destructor present.

Is there any reason why this would happen?

Thank you.

[Catfish666]

In the base class constructor do you initialize the three pointers to NULL (aka 0 aka nullptr)? Or do you new[] them?

By doing either, you ensure that delete[]'ing them is a harmless operation.

Is your base class destructor marked as virtual?
Rule of thumb: a class that's meant to be inherited from should always have a virtual destructor, otherwise polymorphism won't work properly.

You could help us help you by posting your current source code. Then we wouldn't have to guess what the problem is.

[ocprodigy]

Sorry I didn't reply earlier, I almost threw my laptop out.

But your solution did work, by setting the destructor as virtual, the code behaved as normal. Thank you.

[Catfish666]

I'll just leave this reply for the possible future, the one in which you get crashes again, but still do not throw out your laptop.

Implement a copy constructor and copy assignment operator for deep copying.
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2657810/deep-copy-vs-shallow-copy