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In object-oriented programming, when a derived class inherits from a base class, an object of the derived class may be referred to via a pointer or reference of the base class type instead of the derived class type. If there are base class methods overridden by the derived class, the method actually called by such a reference or pointer can be ...
In object-oriented programming, a virtual base class is a nested inner class whose functions and member variables can be overridden and redefined by subclasses of an outer class. [1] Virtual classes are analogous to virtual functions. The run time type of a virtual class depends on the run time type of an object of the outer class.
[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]
An object's virtual method table will contain the addresses of the object's dynamically bound methods. Method calls are performed by fetching the method's address from the object's virtual method table. The virtual method table is the same for all objects belonging to the same class, and is therefore typically shared between them.
Some languages require that method be specifically declared as virtual (e.g. C++), and in others, all methods are virtual (e.g. Java). An invocation of a non-virtual method will always be statically dispatched (i.e. the address of the function call is determined at compile-time).
Virtual inheritance is a C++ technique that ensures only one copy of a base class ' s member variables are inherited by grandchild derived classes. Without virtual inheritance, if two classes B and C inherit from a class A, and a class D inherits from both B and C, then D will contain two copies of A ' s member variables: one via B, and one via C.
In class-based programming, methods are defined within a class, and objects are instances of a given class. One of the most important capabilities that a method provides is method overriding - the same name (e.g., area) can be used for multiple different kinds of classes. This allows the sending objects to invoke behaviors and to delegate the ...
The common case will be a cached class match, and execution will just continue in the method. Out-of-line caching can also be used in the method invocation logic, using the object class and method selector. In one design, the class and method selector are hashed, and used as an index into a method dispatch cache table.