Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
For this reason, calling virtual functions in constructors is generally discouraged. In C++, the "base" function is called. Specifically, the most derived function that is not more derived than the current constructor or destructor's class is called. [7]: §15.7.3 [8] [9] If that function is a pure virtual function, then undefined behavior occurs.
In computer programming, a virtual method table (VMT), virtual function table, virtual call table, dispatch table, vtable, or vftable is a mechanism used in a programming language to support dynamic dispatch (or run-time method binding).
The "vtable" method developed in C++ and other early OO languages (where each class has an array of function pointers corresponding to that class's virtual functions) is nearly as fast as a static method call, requiring O(1) overhead and only one additional memory lookup even in the un-optimized case. However, the vtable method uses the ...
By including, in the class definition, one or more abstract methods (called pure virtual functions in C++), which the class is declared to accept as part of its protocol, but for which no implementation is provided. By inheriting from an abstract type, and not overriding all missing features necessary to complete the class definition. In other ...
The default form of dispatch is static. To get dynamic dispatch the programmer must declare a method as virtual. C++ compilers typically implement dynamic dispatch with a data structure called a virtual function table (vtable) that defines the name-to-implementation mapping for a given class as a set of member function pointers. This is purely ...
[26] [27] In C++, an abstract class is a class having at least one abstract method given by the appropriate syntax in that language (a pure virtual function in C++ parlance). [25] A class consisting of only pure virtual methods is called a pure abstract base class (or pure ABC) in C++ and is also known as an interface by users of the language. [13]
The C++ examples in this section demonstrate the principle of using composition and interfaces to achieve code reuse and polymorphism. Due to the C++ language not having a dedicated keyword to declare interfaces, the following C++ example uses inheritance from a pure abstract base class.
late binding, because virtual function calls are not bound until the time of invocation; single dispatch (i.e., single-argument polymorphism), because virtual function calls are bound simply by looking through the vtable provided by the first argument (the this object), so the runtime types of the other arguments are completely irrelevant.