Add mentioned, it's fine, but not always the best approach. If it's hard to determine the required lifetime (e.g. asynchronous task), I'd add some kind of optional callback you can pass, which would then take cleanup responsibility.

@MatthieuM. Well, that's also part of the crux. ;) For example, a signature bool MyImage::loadFromStream(std::istream &stream); is nice, but the name is more complex than it has to be, since the argument talks for itself. So it's save to just use bool MyImage::load(std::istream &stream); But always keep in mind that names are typically just a human thing. After optimization most names become addresses (if at all), no matter how long the original name was.