The Member Functions Required for Classes with Dynamic Memeory.

• Most references are from the book, chapter 14.
  • But for some reason, she does not cover the assignment operator.
  • this article brings in all the pieces.
  • You can ignore the exception part for now.
• I am going to be somewhat inefficient with my code
  • I am not going to worry about redundant code right now.
  • I want to see the operations with the associated code.
  • You could REALLY clean this up later.
• Implementing the dynamic array.
• Just in case
  • A shallow copy is an operation that copies one object to another without copying any pointed to data.
  • A shallow copy only copies static memory.
  • A shallow copy is the default for
    • The assignment operator.
    • The copy constructor.
  • A deep copy is an operation that not only copies one object to another but also makes copies of any pointed to data.
  • A deep copy copies dynamic as well as static memory.
• To make classes work with dynamic memory we need
  • A destructor
    • This frees the dynamic memory when the instance is destroyed
    • This prevents memory leaks.
  • A copy constructor
    • This is called on pass by value
    • It can be called at other times.
    • This function makes a deep copy from the argument into the parameter
    • The copy constructor prevents a dangling pointer when the descturctor of the parameter is called.
  • An overloaded assignment operator
    • Prevents dangling pointers and memory leaks.
    • This operator makes a deep copy from the rhs to the lhs.
  • Look at experiment.C