Is it OK to use "delete this" to delete the current object?

Question

I'm writing a linked list and I want a struct's destructor (a Node struct) to simply delete itself, and not have any side effects. I want my list's destructor to iteratively call the Node destructor on itself (storing the next node temporarily), like this:

//my list class has first and last pointers
//and my nodes each have a pointer to the previous and next
//node
DoublyLinkedList::~DoublyLinkedList
{
    Node *temp = first();

    while (temp->next() != NULL)
    {
        delete temp;
        temp = temp->next();
    }
}

So this would be my Node destructor:

Node::~Node
{
   delete this;
}

Is this acceptable, especially in this context?

Answer 1

If the Node destructor is being called, then it's already in the process of being deleted. So a delete doesn't make sense inside your Node destructor.

Also this is wrong:

while (temp->next() != NULL)
{
     delete temp;
     temp = temp->next();
}

Instead you should get temp->next() into a temp variable. Otherwise you are accessing deleted memory.

So more like this:

DoublyLinkedList::~DoublyLinkedList
{
  Node *temp = first();
  while (temp != NULL)
  {
       Node *temp2 = temp->next();
       delete temp;
       temp = temp2;
  }
}

Answer 2

No you should not delete this from the destructor. The destructor gets called because of a delete statement (or goes out of scope) and this would most likely lead to some sort of crash.

You also have a couple problems in the DoublyLinkedList desturctor. One, you delete temp then access temp after its been deleted. Second, the code will not actually delete the last element in the linked list.