What is the most dangerous feature of C++? [closed]

Question

I've heard lots of times that phrase of Bjarne Stroustrup "C++ makes it harder to shoot yourself in the foot; but when you do, it takes off the whole leg" and I don't really know if it is as terrible as it sounds.

What's the worst thing that has ever happened to you (or more properly, to your software) while programming in C++? In which ways can it be more dangerous than say plain C, for example?

Answer 1

The virtual destructor requirement is easy for new comers to miss (although I think most compilers are smart enough to point this one out).

Answer 2

delete [] array;

can sometimes become

delete array;

in the hands of someone who doesn't know. Tracking that bug down can suck horribly, and doesn't happen when you're doing malloc and free.

Answer 3

buffer overflows have to be the most dangerous things in both c and c++. This is also the reason that Microsoft announced that they have added memcpy() to their list of banned functions

multiple inheritance is another