Question

C++ Question. Please answer the following question and provide a short explanation, thank you.

When does a class need to provide a destructor? Why?

Answer 1

A destructor can be defined as a member function of the class that is executed whenever an object of it's class goes out of scope. It is required to deallocate memory and do other cleanup for a class object and its class members when the object is destroyed. The destructor is of the same name as that of the class prefixed by ~ (tilde) symbol. Eg:

class Student { public: //Constructor Student() { cout<<"Constructor is called"<<endl; } //Destructor ~Student(){ cout<<"Destructor is called"<<endl; } //Member function void display(){ cout<<"Student Details"<<endl; } };

The output we get for the program is:

Constructor is called Student Details Destructor is called

Destructor is called at the last when we need to delete the object created. A destructor takes no arguments and has no return type. They cannot be declared const, volatile or static.

If no user-defined destructor exists for a class then the compiler implicitly declares one. This implicitly declared destructor is an inline public member of its class.