Creating array of objects on the stack and heap

Question

Consider the following code:

class myarray
{
    int i;

    public:
            myarray(int a) : i(a){ }

}

How can you create an array of

Answer 1

Since C++11 std::array is available for arrays allocated on the stack. It wraps T[size] providing the interface of std::vector, but the most of the methods are constexpr. The downside here is that you never know when you overflow the stack.

std::array stack_array; // Size must be declared explicitly.VLAs

For arrays allocated with heap memory use std::vector. Unless you specify a custom allocator the standard implementation will use heap memory to allocate the array members.

std::vector heap_array (3); // Size is optional.

Note that in both cases a default constructor is required to initialize the array, so you must define

myarray::myarray() { ... }

There are also options to use C's VLAs or C++'s new, but you should refrain from using them as much as possible, because their usage makes the code prone to segmentation faults and memory leaks.