Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!bellcore!uunet!microsoft!jimad
From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Is it okay to use delete after malloc?
Message-ID: <70516@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 6 Feb 91 22:27:16 GMT
References: <1991Jan29.150219.28884@athena.mit.edu> <574@taumet.com>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Distribution: usa
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 16

In article <574@taumet.com> steve@taumet.com (Stephen Clamage) writes:
|ahodgson@athena.mit.edu (Antony Hodgson) writes:
|
|>If I create a string using one of the library routines such as strdup,
|>is it then acceptable to use delete, or is free() required?
|
|Using 'delete' on a pointer is not guaranteed to work if the pointer
|was not obtained from  'new'.  If space is acquired by malloc(), you
|should return it with free().

I agree today.  The ANSI-C++ committee is looking into what interactions
should be allowed/disallowed in terms of new vs malloc, and stream i/o vs
stdio, so things could become easier on programmers in the future.

Today, things are implementation defined, and you're more likely of success 
if you match your malloc/free's, new/delete's, and new[]/delete[]'s.