Cleaning up an STL list/vector of pointers

for(list<Foo*>::const_iterator it = foo_list.begin(); it != foo_list.end(); ++it)
{
    delete *it;
} 
foo_list.clear();

Since we are throwing down the gauntlet here... "Shortest chunk of C++"

static bool deleteAll( Foo * theElement ) { delete theElement; return true; }

foo_list . remove_if ( deleteAll );

I think we can trust the folks who came up with STL to have efficient algorithms. Why reinvent the wheel?


For std::list<T*> use:

while(!foo.empty()) delete foo.front(), foo.pop_front();

For std::vector<T*> use:

while(!bar.empty()) delete bar.back(), bar.pop_back();

Not sure why i took front instead of back for std::list above. I guess it's the feeling that it's faster. But actually both are constant time :). Anyway wrap it into a function and have fun:

template<typename Container>
void delete_them(Container& c) { while(!c.empty()) delete c.back(), c.pop_back(); }

Tags:

C++

List

Stl

Vector