Hi, if you are using C++, perhaps you can use a smart pointer for this (These two lines looks ugly as sin, but provides memory safety I have yet to see with any other language / platform)...


std::tr1::shared_ptr<SDL_Surface> surface;
surface.reset(SDL_LoadImage(imageFileName.c_str()), std::tr1::bind(SDL_FreeSurface, std::tr1::placeholders::_1));
// Now you can do whatever and RAII will take care of the memory management.


Remember: You must set the deleter to be SDL_FreeSurface, because otherwise (and in std::auto_ptr) the c++ delete will just be called, which will cause undefined behaviour with things not created via new.

I generally do this with OpenGL textures but there is no reason this wont work for SDL textures.

If you are not using the very latest compiler you will need to include the technical report 1 versions of memory and functional.
#include <tr1/functional>
#include <tr1/memory>

[quote name='Tallkotten' timestamp='1352366168' post='4998799']
How do i know if i have to do that or not? And what difference does it make?

So why are you using `new' and `delete' for things like a "char * array"? You probably should be using std::vector or std::string instead of using new to allocate arrays. It's much harder to have a memory leak if you don't use `new'.

No, it requires a const char *, which you can from a std::string with the .c_str() member function.