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Language: C++
Expertise: Beginner

Feb 20, 2001

There are various problems regarding pointers that can be handled with the help of macros. Some of these problems are: deleting dangling pointers, deleting pointers other than NULL, and checking for NULL before deleting pointers.

The following macros will take care of these issues:

 
#define POINTERDELETE(m) if(m) {delete m;m =NULL;}
#define POINTERARRAYDELETE if(m) { delete [] m; m = NULL;}

Sample Code:

 
int main()
{
    int *p  = new int;
    char *ptr = new char[100];
    // different operations with pointers
    POINTERARRAYDELETE(ptr);
    POINTERDELETE (p);