Inheritance and virtual functions

What is inheritance?

• models the ‘is-a’ relationship

Why do it?

• Get all member functions and data of the base classes, for free, without having to (re-)write them yourself

Using inheritance

• Use the : notation(after the class name)
• Equivalent of Java’s ‘extends'
• A class could have multiple base class, but more complexity

     

A new access type: protected

• like private but also allows sub-class members to access the members

Base class and derived class(L12 - p11,p12)

• Simple single-inheritance: the base class part appears inside the sub-class
• Simple composition: the contained class part appears inside the containing class

Overriding methods (L12 - p13)

• Sub-class may replace the function which has same name as in base class

Sub-class objects ARE base class objects (L12 - p14)

Virtual functions - the cost of flexibility (L12 - p18)

• Adding a virtual function to a class may make the objects of that class bigger
• A virtual function makes the speed of finding which function to call at runtime slower

Calling base-class functions

• If a function is virtual, you can still call the base class version from the sub-class version - useful so that you don’t need to report code

Inheritance and constructors(L12 - p25,p26,p27,p28)

• Construction and destruction
  • Construction occurs in the order
    • Base class first, then derived class
  • Destruction occurs in the order
    • Derived class first, then base class
  • Derived class part of the object can always assume that base class part exists
    • Derived class can assume that the base class has been constructed when the derived class is constructed
    • Derived class can assume that the base class has not yet been destroyed at the point the derived destructor is used
  • Derived class will not exist/be initialised when the base class constructor/destructor is called
    • Do not call virtual function from the constructor or destructor
• Virtual destructors(L12 - p30,p31,p32,p33,p34)
  • If destructor is not virtual then it will not be called if the object is destroyed through a base class pointer, reference or function - since type of the pointer/reference/function will determine the destructor to call
  • Advice about whether using virtual?
    • If there is already have a virtual functions, then no loss since vtable pointer already exists anyway
    • If there are no other virtual functions, then better not to use a vtable pointer

Detail explanations and example about virtual