Subj : vectors
To   : borland.public.cpp.borlandcpp
From : mike
Date : Tue Jul 27 2004 07:38 pm

hi,

i wanted to know the correct way to implement this. i have a class that
parses a file and stores the result in a vector. i have a public function to
get the vector, but i don't know how to return it properly.

class A
{
  public:
    vector<Person*>& getPeople ();

  private:
    vector<Person*>people_;
}

the getPeople() just returns people_, however i wanted to know if this was
correct. if i return a reference to people_ it is much less overhead then
returning the entire vector. however when the A object is deleted (when i
create it i do A *a = new A ()), is the memory deallocated? if so, it's
probably just coincidence that my program works. i guess the only other
alternative is to return a copy of the entire vector?

Aloha,
mike

.