Deleting pointers and map in destructor

Question

Suppose a class contains pointers and map of strings. In the destructor, apart from deleting the pointers, should we also clear the map or would this be automatically done?

Answer 1

If you have a member variable like std::map<> (that you've stack-allocated) then you can rely on its destructor when your class destructs. The standard mandates that std::map will release all its memory once it's destroyed.

If you declare it as a pointer and you have used new , then you ought to use delete in your destructor. Just be careful not to have any exceptions thrown in your destructor as that will cause memory faults.