std::list of class pointers, understanding problem (with minimal example)

[Frank Steinmetzger]

Hello group

I am trying to solve a segfault in a project of mine. To better understand
what’s going on, I wrote a minimal program to see how deletion of list
elements behaves if the list stores only pointers to class instances.

Looking at the STL source confirmed what I suspected - the instance is not
deleted when erasing the list item and its pointer, so I did not find the
solution to my primary problem yet.

But I found something else in the program that I am curious about. It:
- defines a class k with a private member and an accessor get()
- uses std::list<k*> to store some instances of k
- has an output function that iterates through a list and outputs the
value of the class pointer and the result of pointer->get()
- declares two lists and fills them with three identical class instances
- deletes the middle item in list 1 and destroys its instance of k

List 2 has now, to my understanding, an invalid pointer in item 2, so it
should segfault when calling the output function, should it not?

But instead, the output function prints out "0". Where am I wrong here?
Thanks in advance for your time.


Here’s the program:


#include <iostream>
#include <list>

using namespace std;

class k {
private:
int i;
public:
k(int _i) {i=_i;};
int get() {return i;}
~k() {cout << "destroyed #" << i << endl;}
};


void output(list<k*> &l) {
for (list<k*>::iterator i=l.begin(); i!=l.end(); i++)
cout << (*i) << ": " << (*i)->get() << endl;
cout << endl;
}

int main (int argc, char* argv[]) {
list<k*> list1,list2;
k* pk;
for (int i=1; i<4; i++) {
pk=new k(i);
list1.push_back(pk);
list2.push_back(pk);
}
output(list1); output(list2);

list<k*>::iterator it=list1.begin();
it++;
delete(*it);
list1.erase(it);

output(list1); output(list2);
return 0;
}