Just a list of things to take mindful consideration of when designing C++ objects. This blog post will grow as I keep making mistakes.

Assignment Operator

• Remember to deep clone everything, because you don’t want to release an object on 1 object that another one is pointing to!
  • This extends to the idea of “use less pointers”.
  • When you’re deep cloning, make sure you check whether the pointers are nullptrs or not!
• Remember to check whether you’re copying a version of yourself!
  • Use an if-statement like “if(this == &object) return *this;”

Destructor

• Remember destructors are very useful if you don’t want a memory leak! For those recursively created data structures like trees, you can do the same thing to destroy them recursively(but backwards).
  • Constructors construct the elements FIRST, and then goes into the scope of whatever code you want to inject. Usually, you construct the root element, and then you build the children.
  • Destructors destroys the elements LAST, after executing the code inside the destructor. Usually, you destroy the children, and then destroy itself.

/* The initializer list executes first! */
SomeObject(int arg1, std::string arg2) : m_arg1(arg1), m_arg2(arg2) { 
    /* Some code here */
    /* This gets executed second! */
}

~SomeObject(){
	/* This gets executed first! */
} /* Destruction happens second! */