deleting gtkwidget pointers

nonis · 10-28-2008, 11:16 PM

I'm writing some gtk GUI code lately, and most of it I've been learning from examples. I'm just curious as to why people don't delete their GtkWidget *s. Shouldn't they end up with a lot of memory wasted?

I guess I'm pretty rusty on C/C++ in all. Do you even need to delete pointers that are used throughout your whole program? Do they get deleted when the program exits anyway? Maybe this is why nobody deletes GtkWidget pointers.

abolishtheun · 10-29-2008, 03:47 PM

B/c GTK keeps track of its widgets via reference counting. You can decrement a reference via g_object_unref, but the actual garbage collection and freeing is taken care of by the gtk runtime when the count goes to zero.

nonis · 10-30-2008, 12:48 AM

That's what I figured. But then I have another question:
Do you lose memory if you don't delete a pointer by the end of the file.

Code:

int main()
{
int *pointer = new int(5);
return 0;
}

Should I delete pointer or does your program return all memory once it closes? Do you only have to worry about pointers during your program?

abolishtheun · 10-30-2008, 04:30 AM

all memory is recovered when a process ends... so technically you could get away with not freeing the memory, but its considered extremely bad practice; instead, make it a habit to free all resources you use (memory, files, sockets, devices, etc) before exiting. (you might find this tedious at first, but really, the only thing that separates a good C programmer from a bad one is discipline.) that is, unless you know the resource is garbage collected, like for gtk.

nonis · 10-30-2008, 12:06 PM

Okay, thanks! I was taught to always delete memory, but then after looking at GTK examples and tutorials I started questioning when to free memory. But now I've got it. [=