Am I responsible for freeing/deleting a string returned by stringstream.str()

Question

Am I responsible for deleting a returned std::string created by a stringstream? As in the following code:

std::string MyClass::getReturnMessage() {
    std::stringstream msg;
    msg << "Test return code string stream!";
    return msg.str();
}

void MyClass::callerMethod() {
    std::string msg = getReturnMessage();
    // do I need to call delete msg?
}

If I'm not responsible for calling delete on the returned value, why not? What is the memory management model here that requires or doesn't require me to call delete?

Answer 1

Only call delete on objects you have allocated with new .

Since there's no new in your case, don't call delete either.

The reason is that the returned std::string has automatic storage duration (since it's allocated on the stack), so it will automatically get destroyed when it goes out of scope.