Here's a notable video (Stop teaching C) about that paradigm change to take in teaching the c++ language.
And an also notable blog post
I have a dream ...
I'm dreaming of so called C++ courses/classes/curriculae will stop teaching (requiring) their students to use: ...
Since C++11 as established standard we have the Dynamic memory management facilities aka smart pointers.
Even from earlier standards we have the c++ standard Containers library as a good replacement for raw arrays (allocated with new T[]
) (notably usage of std::string
instead of c-style NUL
terminated character arrays).
Question(s) in bold:
Let aside the placement new
override, is there any valid use case that can't be achieved using smart pointers or standard containers but only using new
and delete
directly (besides implementation of such container/smart pointer classes of course)?
It's sometimes rumored (like here or here) that using new
and delete
handrolled can be "more efficient" for certain cases. Which are these actually? Don't these edge cases need to keep track of the allocations the same way as standard containers or smart pointers need to do?
Almost the same for raw c-style fixed size arrays: There is std::array
nowadays, which allows all kinds of assignment, copying, referencing, etc. easily and syntactically consistent as expected by everyone. Are there any use cases to choose a T myArray[N];
c-style array in preference of std::array<T,N> myArray;
?
Regarding interaction with 3rd party libraries:
Assumed a 3rd party library returns raw pointers allocated with new
like
MyType* LibApi::CreateNewType() {
return new MyType(someParams);
}
you can always wrap that to a smart pointer to ensure that delete
is called:
std::unique_ptr<MyType> foo = LibApi::CreateNewType();
even if the API requires you to call their legacy function to free the resource like
void LibApi::FreeMyType(MyType* foo);
you still can provide a deleter function:
std::unique_ptr<MyType, LibApi::FreeMyType> foo = LibApi::CreateNewType();
I'm especially interested in valid "every day" use cases in contrast to academic/educational purpose requirements and restrictions, which aren't covered by the mentioned standard facilities.
That new
and delete
may be used in memory management / garbage collector frameworks or standard container implementation is out of question1.
One major motivation ...
... to ask this question is to give an alternative approach vs any (homework) questions, which are restricted to use any of the constructs mentioned in the title, but serious questions about production ready code.
These are often referred to as the basics of memory management, which is IMO blatantly wrong/misunderstood as suitable for beginners lectures and tasks.
1)Add.: Regarding that paragraph, this should be a clear indicator that new
and delete
isn't for beginner c++ students, but should be left for the more advanced courses.
Question&Answers:
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