Making C++ behave like Java

I was sidetracked from my C++ programming (Battle for Wesnoth) by the school’s Senior Summer Trainings 2006. After MySQL and PHP, and a week OJT at Zamboanga Freeport (OMED IT Solutions), the dark side of the force has arrived, Java Programming. We are currently being trained by Ma’am Ebony Domingo and some CS upperclasses who already received their respective diplomas last March of this year. Their spirits of magis uplift my morale and drive me to be more optimistic especially in dealing with a language that I’m not quite familiar with.

Java is known for its being a platform independent language, equipped with an auto garbage collection mechanism, etc. (I don’t want to elaborate more on these).

What I am trying to point here out is that, one of Java’s assets, which is the auto garbage collection, is also possible in C++ using an auto pointer. Now, how is this possible?

What an auto pointer does is, it owns a dynamically created object and automatically performs a cleanup when the object is no longer needed.

First, we have to consider how they normally do it (without auto pointer).

void function()
{
        sophie *s(new sophie);
        /* do something here */
        delete s;
}

A classic memory leak would occur if there’s no delete.

Here’s how it’s being done using an auto pointer.

void function()
{
        auto_ptr<sophie> s(new sophie);
        /* do something here */
}

Beyond this scope, the object frees automatically.

God bless us all!