How can I free a pointer vector?

Question

How can I free up memory in a pointer vector? Here's the code:

class A
{
    private:
        int x,y,z;
    public:
        A(param1, param2, param3)
        {
            x=param1;
            y=param2;
            z=param3;
        }
        ~A()
        {
            //prompts an alertbox, warning me about the successful call of the destructor;
        }
};

...
vector<A*> list;
list.push_back(new A(1,2,3));

list.erase(list.begin()+index);//SHOULD delete the object from the memory;
list.clear();

I found out that .erase() doesn't free up memory, neither calls the destructor; I tried to use delete on every list entry with an iteration, but crashes after one iteration. Already checked if the list entry was already NULL, to avoid any error. Am I missing something? Also, I must use only STL, don't need Boost.

Answer 1

list.erase will deallocate the memory for its member elements (and call their destructors, if they exist); it will not call delete on them.

A Boost shared_ptr would be the obvious way of doing this. If you don't want to use that, you're either going to write your own smart-pointer class, or iterate through list and call delete on each pointer before calling erase. You can do this neatly with something like:

void my_delete(A *p)
{
    delete p;
}

...

std::for_each(list.begin(), list.end(), my_delete);