Is delete this allowed?

Question

Is it allowed to delete this; if the delete-statement is the last statement that will be executed on that instance of the class? Of course I\'m sure that the ob

Answer 1

If it scares you, there's a perfectly legal hack:

void myclass::delete_me()
{
    std::unique_ptr bye_bye(this);
}

I think delete this is idiomatic C++ though, and I only present this as a curiosity.

There is a case where this construct is actually useful - you can delete the object after throwing an exception that needs member data from the object. The object remains valid until after the throw takes place.

void myclass::throw_error()
{
    std::unique_ptr bye_bye(this);
    throw std::runtime_exception(this->error_msg);
}

Note: if you're using a compiler older than C++11 you can use std::auto_ptr instead of std::unique_ptr, it will do the same thing.