Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Objective suicide
Message-ID: <276@taumet.com>
Date: 28 Jun 90 15:26:48 GMT
References: <685@dyndata.UUCP>
Reply-To: steve@taumet.UUCP (Stephen Clamage)
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 19

In article <685@dyndata.UUCP> dan@dyndata.UUCP (Dan Everhart) writes:
>Is it kosher for an object to delete itself?  To wit:
>
>class Obj
>   {
>   /* ... */
>   void Suicide () { /* ... */  delete this; }
>   /* ... */
>   }

Yes, but do be careful, as noted in your full example.  I have done this
in a class destructor, but would not do it in a normal member function.
After the delete, there is no guarantee that the class data makes any
sense, and in particular that the virtual table is intact!  So a later
destructor may try to operate with garbage.  This is a particular
worry with virtual destructors when the virtual table is trashed.
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com