As long as you're careful, it's OK for an object to commit suicide
(delete this).
Here's how I define "careful":
- You must be absolutely 100% positively sure that this object was
allocated via new (not by new[], nor by placement
new, nor a local object on the stack, nor a global, nor a
member of another object; but by plain ordinary new).
- You must be absolutely 100% positively sure that your member function
will be the last member function invoked on this object.
- You must be absolutely 100% positively sure that the rest of your
member function (after the delete this line) doesn't touch any piece of
this object (including calling any other member functions or touching any
data members).
- You must be absolutely 100% positively sure that no one even touches
the this pointer itself after the delete this line. In other words, you
must not examine it, compare it with another pointer, compare it with NULL,
print it, cast it, do anything with it.
Naturally the usual caveats apply in cases where your this pointer is a
pointer to a base class when you don't have a virtual
destructor.