C++ Programming - Constructors and Destructors - Discussion

Destructors are called automatically most of the time when the object gets out of scope, the containing object, or a child object is getting destroyed. There is no natural place to pass arguments in these cases.

Destructors can be invoked directly through the delete operator or through type::~type (). These are typically called in low-level code, which most programmers don't have to deal with. In theory, it was possible to pass arguments with these invocations of destructors.

Even though C++ could have allowed delete (param) object (currently it means something different) and object. ~type (param) , this would have needlessly complicated the language. I can see nothing that a destructor can do with parameters, which can't be achieved by an earlier function call. Having the destructor do only one thing - single kind of clean up - makes things simpler.