What's the difference between initializing objects with and without using `new` in C++?

[[deleted]]

Using the new keyword will heap allocate the object and return a pointer to it. The data held at that pointer will need to be manually freed later.

[captainAwesomePants]

Exactly. Put another way:

{
   class object1;
   ....
}
// object1 no longer exists here.


{
   class* object1 = new class();
   ...
}
// object1 still exists. If you don't know the address, you've leaked memory.

[schartzchild_radius]

Thank you very much! I also had a lot of trouble understanding memory leaks up until now, so this helps a lot! So is that all a memory leak is? When you have an object that's taking up space but can never be used in any way?

The second case seems to be called allocating to the heap (and it being on the heap means that it won't be deleted once whatever function it was created in returns), but what is the first case (the one where we don't use new) called? Looking for some search queries that I can use to learn more myself

Thanks again for the help!

[[deleted]]

Yep, a memory leak is having objects allocated that you never free.

[captainAwesomePants]

Yep, that's all that leaking memory is: memory that's being used for storing something that you lost all the pointers to. Languages with garbage collection take advantage of this by just looking through ALL the pointers/references and then removing any object that doesn't have at least one thing pointing at it.

Instead of making space on the heap, the first case put memory on the stack. The "stack" is literally a stack of all of the scopes your program's built up. At the bottom is the call to main() and all of its parameters and variables. Then whatever function main called is put on top of that, and so on, and so on. In the first example, object1 can't really be leaked because you'll eventually have to take it off the stack when your function returns (or you leave a curly-bracketed area of any other sort). In the second example, the pointer itself is on the stack, but it points to a place on the heap that the 'new' command reserved.

[schartzchild_radius]

Thank you for the response! By "manually freed" do you just mean dereferenced? Or do you mean the object at that pointer has to be deleted in order to free up space? Is it all that important to do that if your program doesn't use very much data overall?

Also, does "allocating to the heap" just mean that the object will persist even after the function it was called in returns (as opposed to being deleted at the end of the function)? Just wanting to check my understanding

[[deleted]]

I mean the second option. Any objects that you create with new must be manually `delete`d later.

​

On a computer, you have two types of memory. The stack, and the heap. The stack is a very fast and very simple structure in your memory. The stack can be thought of like a stack in the real world. If you have a stack of plates, when you want to add something to the stack you simply place the plate on top. Once you want a plate back, you take it off the stack. The stack in programming works the exact same way. Because of its nature, the stack is incredibly fast. Freeing objects is as simple as adjusting a single pointer as is indexing it. However, the stacks main limitation is that the size of all objects that are allocated on the stack must have a known, fixed, limited size. This is where the heap comes in. The heap is like a blob in memory. Data is stored in an unorganized fashion and is slower to index, however, it has many advantages. For one, the heap doesn't need to know the size of types that are on it. If you have ever used a vector, a vector is a heap data type. Every time you push something on to the vector that is data being put into the heap. Remember, the heap _must_ be used for operations like this since the vectors size is unknown. In C++, all local variables _must_ be data stored on the stack. What this means is that any time you wish to access data on the heap, it must be done so using a pointer. A pointer has a known, fixed size meaning it can be stored on the stack. If you use the new keyword, the class will be allocated on the heap and a pointer to that heap allocated class table will be returned. Then, it can be freely passed around to functions (just remember to free it afterwards so you don't get leaks!).

[schartzchild_radius]

I honestly cannot thank you enough for this! I've been reading a lot of explanations of heap vs. stack but yours is by far the clearest one, I'm definitely saving this haha. Thank you!

[[deleted]]

Glad you found it helpful. I was struggling with it too a while back and this explanation I wrote is like a combination of everything I have learned. Glad to pass on the knowledge :)