What do I need to do before deleting elements in a vector of pointers to dynamically allocated objects?

Question

I have a vector that I fill with pointers to objects. I am trying to learn good memory management, and have a few general questions:

1. Is it true that when I am

Answer 1

Is it true that when I am done with the vector I must loop through it and call delete on each pointer?

Well, you don't have to loop by hand, you can also use an algorithm:

#include 
#include 
#include 

int main()
{
    std::vector vec;
    vec.push_back(new Derived());
    vec.push_back(new Derived());
    vec.push_back(new Derived());

    // ...

    std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), std::default_delete());
}

If you don't have a C++0x compiler, you can use boost:

#include 
#include 

std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), boost::lambda::delete_ptr());

Or you can write your own functor:

struct delete_ptr
{
    template 
    void operator()(T* p)
    {
        delete p;
    }
};

std::for_each(vec.begin(), vec.end(), delete_ptr());