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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 ...
Thus, fetching the method's address from a given offset into a virtual method table will get the method corresponding to the object's actual class. [2] The C++ standards do not mandate exactly how dynamic dispatch must be implemented, but compilers generally use minor variations on the same basic model.
This is a generalization of single-dispatch polymorphism where a function or method call is dynamically dispatched based on the derived type of the object on which the method has been called. Multiple dispatch routes the dynamic dispatch to the implementing function or method using the combined characteristics of one or more arguments.
In computing, late binding or dynamic linkage [1] —though not an identical process to dynamically linking imported code libraries—is a computer programming mechanism in which the method being called upon an object, or the function being called with arguments, is looked up by name at runtime.
The call is therefore subject to all the usual additional performance costs that are associated with dynamic resolution of calls, usually more than in a language supporting only single method dispatch. In C++, for example, a dynamic function call is usually resolved by a single offset calculation - which is possible because the compiler knows ...
Virtual functions allow a program to call methods that don't necessarily even exist at the moment the code is compiled. [citation needed] In C++, virtual methods are declared by prepending the virtual keyword to the function's declaration in the base class. This modifier is inherited by all implementations of that method in derived classes ...
In object-oriented programming languages that support virtual methods, the compiler will automatically create a dispatch table for each object of a class containing virtual methods. This table is called a virtual method table or vtable , and every call to a virtual method is dispatched through the vtable.
This feature is known as dynamic dispatch. If the call variability relies on more than the single type of the object on which it is called (i.e. at least one other parameter object is involved in the method choice), one speaks of multiple dispatch. A method call is also known as message passing. It is conceptualized as a message (the name of ...