What is the order of construction and destruction in c plus plus?

Answer 1

The least-derived base classes are always constructed first, in the order specified by the derived class inheritance list. The most-derived class (the one you are actually instantiating) is always constructed last.

Destruction is basically the reverse of construction. However, base class destructors must be declared virtual to ensure that the most-derived class destructor is called first, regardless of which class destructor is actually invoked. That is, if you hold a pointer to a base class that has no virtual destructor, deleting that pointer will only destroy the base class, not the derived class, leaving the derived class in an invalid state (because it no longer has an underlying base class) and with no way to recover the memory it consumes.

It is important to remember that if you declare any virtual methods within a class, you must also declare the destructor virtual. A class without a virtual destructor is not intended to be derived from. If it has virtual methods, but no virtual destructor, it is not well-formed and must not be used as a base class.