Assert frees memory in C++

Question

Suppose we have a program where we allocate some memory and then we have an assert statement some lines after. If the assert statement throws and error, what happens with the allocated memory? Does it get free before stopping the program?

Answer 1

assert on failure, writes the error to stderr and calls abort(). which unlike exit() doesn't execute the functions registered with atexit(), nor does it call destructors.

Hence, none of your destructors, clean-up code etc can be called. So it is up to the OS, as the memory isn't freed by the program, before its "unexpected" termination.

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This is probably by design, as calling destructors might result in some further error. It terminates at that failed assert, executing no further code.