Be careful of FHEcontext’s shallow copy feature in HElib

Check following code which uses HElib:

class A
{
    FHEcontext context;
public:
    FHEcontext& getContext()
    {
        return context;
    }
};

void func()
{
    auto context = a.getContext();
    ......
}

A a;

int main(void)
{
    ......
    func();
    ......
    return 0;
}

In func():

......
auto context = a.getContext();
......

It will allocate a local variable context whose type is FHEcontext, not “FHEcontext&“, and the point is it will be shallow copy of FHEcontext:

class FHEcontext {

......
  //! @breif A default EncryptedArray
  const EncryptedArray* ea;
......
}

FHEcontext::~FHEcontext()
{
  delete ea;
}

So when the local variable context is destroyed, the memory of ea is also released; this will lead to context member of class A references a already freed memory. That will be a disaster!

References:
auto specifier type deduction for references;
The issue about FHEcontext’s copy constructor/assignment operator.