Everything I know about C++ I learned just so that I can write a link
between an interpreted language and the rdkit, so there are definitely some
gaps in my knowledge.
What I'm trying to understand right now is the expected lifetime of an Atom
pointer returned by a molecule, for instance by the getAtomWithIdx method.
Based on the documentation, since this method doesn't say the user is
responsible for deleting the returned pointer I know I'm not supposed to
delete it. But when exactly does it get deleted? If I dereference it after
deleting the molecule, what is it?
auto mol = RDKit::SmilesToMol("CCCC");
auto atom = mol->getAtomWithIdx(0);
auto m2 = atom->getOwningMol();
std::cout << "Z=" << atom->getAtomicNum() << std::endl; // prints Z=6
delete mol;
std::cout << "Z=" << atom->getIdx() << std::endl; // prints Z=0
std::cout << "N=" << m2.getNumAtoms() << std::endl;// prints N=4
delete atom; // seg fault
I would have thought the first time dereferencing the atom pointer after
deleting mol would have crashed, but it does not. I would also have
expected bad things when calling the getNumAtoms method on m2 after calling
delete on mol, but this also works just fine. What am I missing?
Thanks
Jason
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