It seems you're confused with the basic concept of object instances. When you add something to a vector, you don't move it into it, you copy it:
vector<string> vec;
string s;
vec.push_back(s);
vec[0]
is not s
, it's a copy of s
. So when you remove it from the vector, s
is not affected.
If you don't want copies, you should switch to pointers instead. You can them remove the pointers from the vector and the destructor of the object they point to will not be called.
Edit: OK, it seems you're already using pointers. You said:
reading docs for vector and other C++ containers it appears that when objects are popped their destructors are called
That is true. When you remove a pointer from the vector, the pointer is getting destroyed. That's what the docs mean. It doesn't mean that the object the pointer points to is getting destroyed:
vector<string*> vec;
string s;
vec.push_back(&s);
vec.pop_back();
s
is not affected at all. What gets destroyed by the pop operation is the pointer that holds the address of s
, not s
itself.
So you're fine.