V599. The virtual destructor is not present, although the 'Foo' class contains virtual functions.

The analyzer has found a potential error: a virtual destructor is absent in a class.

The following conditions must hold for the analyzer to generate the V599 warning:

1) A class object is destroyed by the delete operator.

2) The class has at least one virtual function.

Presence of virtual functions indicates that the class may be used polymorphically. In this case a virtual destructor is necessary to correctly destroy the object.

Consider the following code sample.

class Father
{
public:
  Father() {}
  ~Father() {} 
  virtual void Foo() { ... }
};

class Son : public Father
{
public:
  int* buffer;
  Son() : Father() { buffer = new int[1024]; }
  ~Son() { delete[] buffer; }
  virtual void Foo() { ... }
};

...
Father* object = new Son();
delete object;              // Call ~Father()!!

The code is incorrect and leads to memory leak. At the moment of deleting the object only the destructor in the 'Father' class is called. To call the 'Son' class' destructor you should make the destructor virtual.

This is the correct code:

class Father
{
public:
  Father() {}
  virtual ~Father() {} 
  virtual void Foo() { ... }
};

The V599 diagnostic message helps to detect far not all the issues related to absence of virtual destructors. Here is the corresponding example: "You develop a library. It contains the XXX class which has virtual functions but no virtual destructor. You don't handle this class in the library yourself, so the analyzer won't warn you about the danger. The problem might occur at the side of a programmer who uses your library and whose classes are inheritance of the XXX class."

The C4265: 'class' : class has virtual functions, but destructor is not virtual diagnostic message implemented in Visual C++ allows you to detect much more issues. This is a very useful message. But it is turned off by default. I cannot say why. This subject was discussed on the Stack Overflow site: Why is C4265 Visual C++ warning (virtual member function and no virtual destructor) off by default? Unfortunately, nobody managed to give a reasonable explanation.

We suppose that C4265 gives many false positives in code where the mixin pattern is used. When using this pattern, a lot of interface classes appear which contain virtual functions but they don't need a virtual destructor.

We can say that the V599 diagnostic rule is a special case of C4265. It produces fewer false reports but, unfortunately, allows you to detect fewer defects. If you want to analyze your code more thoroughly, turn on the C4265 warning.

P. S.

Unfortunately, ALWAYS declaring a destructor as a virtual one is not a good programming practice. It leads to additional overhead costs, since the class has to store a pointer to the Virtual Method Table.

P.P.S.

The related diagnostic warning are V689https://www.viva64.com/en/w/v108/.

Additional resources:

• Wikipedia. Virtual method table.
• Wikipedia. Virtual function.
• Wikipedia. Destructor.
• Discussion on Stack Overflow. When to use virtual destructors?
• The Old New Thing. When should your destructor be virtual?

This diagnostic is classified as: