That's true, but it's not obvious why anything in that code calls new or delete, since the destructor is defined elsewhere. So why does the constructor invoke o

That's true, but it's not obvious why anything in that code calls new or delete, since the destructor is defined elsewhere. So why does the constructor invoke operator delete? The missing puzzle piece is apparently exception handling: if the implicit constructor throws (which of course it cannot) it must delete this object (which of course will be null). Sadly this silly requirement persists even when exception handling is disabled at the compiler level.