Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!taumet!steve
From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Objective suicide
Message-ID: <282@taumet.com>
Date: 30 Jun 90 21:42:15 GMT
References: <685@dyndata.UUCP> <276@taumet.com> <9299@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM>
Reply-To: steve@taumet.UUCP (Stephen Clamage)
Organization: Taumetric Corporation, San Diego
Lines: 25

In article <9299@cadillac.CAD.MCC.COM> vaughan@mcc.com (Paul Vaughan) writes:
>   From: steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage)
>   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.
>   [... ]
>I'm having trouble making sense out of this. [...]

If you have a color monitor, insert my red face here.  Michael Tiemann
was also kind enough to point out that what I said could not possibly
have been what I meant.  Please disregard my previous posting, and in
future I'll try not to respond to net news before my morning coffee.

You can "delete this;" in a member function, but as in my earlier posting,
you must be very careful to avoid a second deletion by a call to the
destructor, and also avoid any later reference to any virtual functions
(including virtual destructors).  In other words, it's dangerous.
-- 

Steve Clamage, TauMetric Corp, steve@taumet.com