What will be happen if you dynamically allocates memory for one object of the class as an argument?

Question

class Example
{
  private:
   Example* pointer;
   Example* pointer2;
  public:
   Example();
   void setPointer2(Example* object);
};

Example::Example()
{
  pointer = new Example();
}

void Example::setPointer2(Example* object)
{
  this->pointer2 = object;
}

int main()
{
  Example object;
  object.setPointer2(new Example());

  return 0;
}

Delete is not important. I just want to know what is the differences between this two object which is adresses holding by pointer and pointer2. Are they differently allocated? The actual question is, does it matter where to use the "new" operator?

Answer 1

A major problem you have in your code is infinite recursion! The constructor you have defined:

Example::Example()
{
  pointer = new Example();
}

creates a new object of its own type. This will call the constructor (again), and that call will call the constructor (again and again...)

But, other than that issue, it doesn't really matter whether you create a new object by directly assigning its address to pointer or if you create the object elsewhere and then assign its address (later) to pointer2. Both will point to an object of the class.