Describe new operator and delete operator.
- new and delete operators are provided by C++ for runtime memory management. They are used for dynamic allocation and freeing of memory while a program is running.
- The new operator allocates memory and returns a pointer to the start of it. The delete operator frees memory previously allocated using new.
- The general form of using them is :
p_var = new type;
delete p_var;
- new allocates memory on the heap. If there is insufficient memory, then new will fail and a bad_alloc exception will be generated. The program should handle this exception.
- Consider the following program :
#include <iostream>
#include <new>
using namespace std;
int main()
{
int *p;
try
{
p = new int; //dynamic allocation of memory
}
catch (bad_alloc x)
{
cout << “Memory allocation failed”;
return 1;
}
*p = 100;
cout <<”P has value”<<*p;
delete p; //free the dynamically allocated memory
return 0;
}
What is new and delete operator?
- In C++, when you want dynamic memory, you can use operator new. It returns a pointer to the beginning of the new block of memory allocated. It returns a pointer to the beginning of the new block of memory allocated.
- When memory allocated by new operator is no longer required, it is freed using operator delete.
