Cost

• Introduction of a virtual table associated with Point2d to hold the address of each virtual function it declares. The size of this table in general is the number of virtual functions declared plus an additional one or two slots to support runtime type identification.
• Introduction of the vptr within each class object. The vptr provides the runtime link for an object to efficiently find its associated virtual table.
• Augmentation of the constructor to initialize the object's vptr to the virtual table of the class. Depending on the aggressiveness of the compiler's optimization, this may mean resetting the vptr within the derived and each base class constructor. (This is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5.)
• Augmentation of the destructor to reset the vptr to the associated virtual table of the class. (It is likely to have been set to address the virtual table of the derived class within the destructor of the derived class. Remember, the order of destructor calls is in reverse: derived class and then base class.) An aggressive optimizing compiler can suppress a great many of these assignments.