In article 1206960637420001@rph.bluefin.net, bobh@hablutzel.com (Bob Hablutzel) writes:
>
>Forgive me if this has been covered, as I have just discovered this group
>(and this thread), but doesn't deleting an object whose declaration is
>incomplete allow for the possibility of protection violations? In other
>words, if the declaration of the class makes operator delete or the
>destructor private/protected, then the delete would have been allowed for
>an object that should not be deleted.

It allows for the possibility of anything. The results of the delete
operation are undefined (meaning anything can happen) if the incomplete
type has a non-trivial destructor or a deallocation function.

A good defensive programming rule is not to delete objects whose type
is incomplete. The compiler can easily provide such warnings, and
some do (Sun C++, for example).

Whether the language rule should be changed to disallow delete-ing
an object whose type is incomplete is a separate subject.
---
Steve Clamage, stephen.clamage@eng.sun.com




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