13-MemoryPointers.pptx

Programming Abstractions Cynthia Lee CS106X Topics: Last week, with Marty Stepp: Making your own class Arrays in C++ This week: Memory and Pointers Revisit some topics from last week Deeper look at what a pointer is Hexadecimal! Dynamic Memory allocation Linked nodes Linked List data structure (if we have time) Binary tree data structure 2 Arrays (revisit from last week) Arrays (11.3) type* name = new type[length]; A dynamically allocated array. The variable that refers to the array is a pointer. The memory allocated for the array must be manually released,or else the program will have a memory leak. (_) Another array creation syntax that we will not use*: type name[length]; A fixed array; initialized at declaration; can never be resized. Stored in a different place in memory; the first syntax uses the stack and the second uses the heap. (discussed later) * For 106X, I would like you to know this syntax and be able to diagram what it does, but Marty Stepp was right in that we won’t generally be using it in code you write (for style/design reasons). Arrays on the stack and heap void myfunction() { int x = 5; int y; int arr[2]; arr[1] = 3; int *heapArr = new int[2]; // bad -- memory leak coming! } What happens when myfunction() returns? Memory main() x: y: 0x0 myfunction() arr: heapArr: ArrayList (revisit from last week) Freeing array memory delete[] name; Releases the memory associated with the given array Must be done for all arrays created with new Or else the program has a memory leak. (No garbage collector like Java) Leaked memory will be released when the program exits, but for long-running programs, memory leaks are bad and will eventually exhaust your RAM int* a = new int[3]; a[0] = 42; a[1] = -5; a[2] = 17; ... delete[] a; Destructor (12.3) // ClassName.h // ClassName.cpp ~ClassName(); ClassName::~ClassName() { ... destructor: Called when the object is deleted