Maybe you're right that it's wrong to think that modern C++17 (unique_ptr, shared_ptr) written by experts is free of memory safety issues.
But in this specific case, it looks like old code from 2002[1]. No modern techniques such as std:unique_ptr. Just 1970s C style raw pointer manipulation. I suppose the contemporaneous compiler used by John Maddock would have been C++98?!?
The main windows compiler would have been Visual C++ 6, which was released before standardization, and had notable differences from C++98. It was also buggy for non-trivial templates. Visual C++ 2002 wasn't much better.
But in this specific case, it looks like old code from 2002[1]. No modern techniques such as std:unique_ptr. Just 1970s C style raw pointer manipulation. I suppose the contemporaneous compiler used by John Maddock would have been C++98?!?
[1] one example of a source file mentioned by the bug report: http://www.boost.org/doc/libs/1_63_0/boost/regex/v4/perl_mat...