👀 Views: 63 💬 Answers: 1 📅 Created: 2025-06-13

c++ smart-pointers memory-management destructor cpp

I tried several approaches but none seem to work. I'm working on a personal project and I'm working through a tutorial and I need some guidance on I've been struggling with this for a few days now and could really use some help... I'm sure I'm missing something obvious here, but I'm working with a serious scenario with my custom data structure that utilizes `std::shared_ptr`... The question arises when I try to destroy my data structure, leading to a double free behavior, which results in an application crash. Here's a simplified version of my code: ```cpp #include <iostream> #include <memory> #include <vector> struct Node { int value; std::shared_ptr<Node> next; Node(int val) : value(val), next(nullptr) {} }; class CustomList { public: std::shared_ptr<Node> head; void append(int value) { if (!head) { head = std::make_shared<Node>(value); } else { std::shared_ptr<Node> current = head; while (current->next) { current = current->next; } current->next = std::make_shared<Node>(value); } } ~CustomList() { // Destructor to manually clean up the list head.reset(); // Attempting to use reset() } }; int main() { CustomList list; list.append(1); list.append(2); list.append(3); return 0; } ``` When I run this code, I often see a segmentation fault at runtime, particularly when the `CustomList` destructor is called. I initially thought using `std::shared_ptr` would automatically manage memory and prevent leaks, but I'm not sure if I'm handling the pointers correctly in the destructor or during the append operation. I have also tried replacing `head.reset()` with `head = nullptr;` in the destructor, but the question continues. I've researched potential issues with shared ownership and circular references, but I'm not sure if that's the case here since I'm not creating circular references explicitly. Any insight into why I'm getting a double free, or if there's a better way to manage this list structure would be greatly appreciated! For context: I'm using Cpp on Linux. Any ideas what could be causing this? My development environment is Ubuntu. Any help would be greatly appreciated! I recently upgraded to Cpp 3.11. Any feedback is welcome! The project is a CLI tool built with Cpp. Any ideas how to fix this? Am I approaching this the right way? For context: I'm using Cpp on Ubuntu 20.04. I'm open to any suggestions.