#C++ copy constructor game code

Martinho's Fernandes's advice and go for the Rule of Zero. In turn, not having to delete that object means no need to define a user-provided destructor, and no need to take care about the Rule of Three, Rule of Five, or whatnot. Having VanillaOption (or its base class) hold a unique_ptr rather than a raw pointer would make it unnecessary to delete the PayOff object returned by clone(). Return std::unique_ptr(new PayOffCall(*this)) I'm saying this because I believe returning a unique_ptr sounds like the appropriate thing to do here (the option object has to hold its own PayOff object, and that must stay alive just as long as the option object is alive), and there is no std::make_unique() function in C++11 (it will be there in C++14): std::unique_ptr PayOffCall::clone() const

#C++ copy constructor game code

Unfortunately, this is likely the exceptional case where new is needed. I'm reading C++ Design Patterns and Derivatives Pricing by Mark Joshi and implementing his code in C++11. In fact, in C++11 you should (almost) never use new unless you are doing really low-level memory management (something you should avoid unless you really have to) - and in C++14, you can remove the 'almost'. That's true, using new is not idiomatic in C++11. Returning new caught me as something that might be inappropriate in C++11

A copy constructor for class X is a special member function with no return type which usually has the signature: X(X const&)ДЇunction clone() is just a regular (virtual) function, and its particular meaning is recognized by you - the user - as something which creates clones of your object, but not by the compiler, which has no idea what clone() does. The solution he advises is to create a virtual copy constructor in PayOffDoubleDigital's base class ДЇirst of all, clone() is not a copy-constructor.