Program crashes when attempting to erase the last std::vector element - c++

Question

I'm iterating through the vector std::vector<Bullet*> bullets, and I'm looking for collisions with an enemy. It works great in every case, except for the case when: the last fired bullet (there has to be more than one) collides with the enemy.
Code-
for(std::vector<Bullet*>::iterator it = bullets.begin(); it != bullets.end(); ++it)
{
if ((*it)->getSprite()->getGlobalBounds().intersects(enemy->getSprite()->getGlobalBounds()))
{
delete *it;
bullets.erase(it);
enemy->destroy();
if (bullets.size() == 0)
break;
}
}
I commented particular elements in the for loop, and found out that the bullet.erase(it) call crashes the program.
When that crash happens, I receive a return code: 134 (0x86). What's the issue for that code?
(*it)->getSprite() returns a pointer to a sprite from Bullet class.

Answer 1

What about using remove_if and erase combo:
auto is_hit = [&enemy](Bullet *bullet)
{
if (bullet->getSprite()->getGlobalBounds().intersects(enemy->getSprite()->getGlobalBounds()))
{
delete bullet;
enemy->destroy();
return true;
}
return false;
};
bullets.erase(std::remove_if(bullets.begin(), bullets.end(), is_hit), bullets.end());

Answer 2

For your consideration:
The following code snippet shows how I clean a vector from its tail (the complementary action to adding element to the tail with push_back())
while(!gBoard.empty())
{
Cell_t* cell = gBoard.back(); // fetch last element (a ptr)
gBoard.pop_back(); // remove last element
delete cell; // remove cell from heap - raw pointer
}
Perhaps you could do this style of clean and use multiple vectors ... it still might be faster than alternatives.
In your problem, each bullet appears to have at least two destinations ... hit or miss.
while ( ! Bullets.empty() ) // spin through bullet list
{
Bullet* aBullet = Bullets.back(); // fetch copy of last element
Bullets.pop_back(); // remove last element
if (*aBullet)-> getSprite()->getGlobalBounds().
intersects(enemy->getSprite()->getGlobalBounds()))
{
// HIT!
Hit.push_back(aBullet); // capture the element to Hit bucket
enemy->destroy(); // tbd - a decision? or always final?
// no delete
if (bullets.size() == 0) // no more to compute, redundant to while
break;
}
else
{
// MISS
Missed.push_back(aBullet); // capture element to Missed bucket
}
} // while
assert(bullets.empty()); // bullets have been consumed
// clean up spent bullets that intersected
while (! Hit.empty() )
{
Bullet* aBullet = Hit.back(); // copy last element from Hit
Hit.pop_back(); // remove last element from Hit
delete aBullet; // tbr - delete the dynamic memory
}
// clean up spent bullets that missed
// move the bullet from Missed vec back into Bullets vec
// for tbd - furthur evaluation ... did the bullet hit any other obj
// the following also happens to 'undo' the seq reversal
while (! Missed.empty() )
{
Bullets.push_back (Missed.back()); // copy last element from Missed
Missed.pop_back(); // remove last element from Missed
// tbd - also delete the missed bullet?
// or do you check for these bullets to collide with other objects
}
// possibly a copy can do this last loop, but this is simple and
// undoes the reversal.

Answer 3

and found out that the bullet.erase(it) call [for that last element]
crashes the program
In some sense, you are probably performing the erase prematurely.
Consider the following:
It is possible that the test parameters of range, target, and weapon-type might combine to achieve, for example, a 10% hit ratio. Thus, in a collection of 1000 shots, (1000 == bullets.size()), there would be (~) 100 bullets that have hit the target.
Your code finds each of the elements, and creates 100 'holes' in the vector by using bullets.erase(). Because the vector data is maintained contiguous, the erase method also moves other elements to fill the holes created by erase. (The details of how might differ between implementations.)
Generally, 100 erases causes 100 shuffles of less than (at-most) 1000 elements each time ... this one-at-a-time-approach would probably be a comparatively 'slow' process.
As an alternative to the current design, instead of find-and-erase, defer the erase until your code has identified and marked all 'intersects'.
you can find the intersects (hits) in the same way, but 'mark' them, don't erase them yet. Options include adding a bool to the Bullet class, or maintaining a matching bool vector to hold this flag for each bullet.
Using two indexes,
-- i1 initialized to 0 (first (left most) vector element) and
-- i2 initialized to (bullets.size() - 1) [last (right most) vector element]
-- Spin increment i1 to find the first hit,
-- Spin decrement i2 to find the last miss,
-- then std::swap (bullets[i1], bullets[i2])
Repeat until i1 >= i2
Now that all the hits are contiguous AND at the tail of the vector, perform a single erase of the 100 hits
This should eliminate any shuffling.
Also, there should be no use of an erased element ... because the erase occurs at the end of the process.