Main differences between objects and object pointers?

Question

What's the difference between doing,

EventList temp;

EventList* temp = new EventList();

Where now temp you access it's vars by doing using . and the other is ->

Besides that difference, what else? Pointer allocates on the heap while just EventList is on the stack. So is it primarily a scope thing?

Answer 1

There is short summary

Object on the stack EventList temp;

• access is little bit faster, there is no derefferencing
• object are automatically deleted at the end of method which creates them so we don't have to care about their deletion
• stack size is limited ( much more than heap )
• these objects cannot be returned from the method without copying

Object on the heap EventList* temp = new EventList();

• heap is "unlimited" ( comparing to stack )
• these objects are easilly shared accross whole application because they aren't automatically deteled
• we have to delete them manually, if we loose the pointer then there are lost bytes in memory ( leaks )

Answer 2

Eventlist temp is allocated and deallocated automatically within the scope in which it is called. That is, when you run the following code:

{
    EventList temp;
}

The default constructor for EventList is called at the point of its declaration, and the destructor is called at the end of the block.

EventList *temp = new EventList(); is allocated on the heap. You can read more about it here.