3.2 C++

Now, let us reconsider the example used in the constructor section, but with the addition of a destructor method:

class Y
{
  public:
    int i;
    float f;
    char a[20];

    Y(void);
    ~Y(void);
}

Y::Y(void)
{
  i = 0;
  f = 3.14;
  a[0] = '\0';
} 

Y::~Y(void)
{
  cout << "an object of class Y is destroyed!" << endl;
}

The destructor method in this example is rather useless, it simply confirms the destruction. Let us now consider the following block of code that defines a variable of class Y type:

{
  Y myY;

  cout << myY.i << " " myY.f << " " << myY.a << endl;
}

Immediately after the cout... statement, the program calls the destructor of myY, which prints another line to confirm that an object of class Y is destroyed.

Again, the argument for C++ is that this is a cool feature to make sure myY has a chance to clean up before it gets deallocated. The significance of the destructor method becomes very significant as objects contain pointers to either member objects (not to be confused with data members) or peer objects.