A destructor is a special class member function that is called automatically when a variable of that class type is destroyed. C$++$ class objects commonly use dynamically allocated data that is deallocated by the class's destructor.

Ex: A linked list class dynamically allocates nodes when adding items to the list. Without a destructor, the link list's nodes are not deallocated. The linked list class destructor should be implemented to deallocate each node in the list.