omission of "virtual" in overridden method declarations in derived classes
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From: Edward Diener on 23 Feb 2010 02:57 Marco Nef wrote: >>> Or is the virtuality inherited implicitly from the root of the >>> inheritance tree even if it is omitted in intermediate classes? >> >> Yes. C++ does not require the programmer to repeat the 'virtual' keyword >> for a virtual method in a derived class. > > Which is one of the worst "features" of C++ in large projects, as it causes > lots of errors (how do you know that a method is virtual if it is not > written in the declaration of the class you are working with?). It is called documentation. That's how you know. > It should > also be that base methods can only be called in the direct base class, or > the programmer has to explicitly write a cast to skip a hierachy level. So if an inherited method is not in the immediate base class, you do not think that a C++ derived class should be allowed to call it ? > > Some time ago I asked to change this in the new standard, so that virtual > must be repeated in derived classes. But the reply in this group was that > lots of old code would not compile anymore. That was a bad answer, as > compilers could have a flag to ignore such an additional security > feature in > old code... A better answer is simply that C++ programmers neither need or want this feature which you consider so important. -- [ See http://www.gotw.ca/resources/clcm.htm for info about ] [ comp.lang.c++.moderated. First time posters: Do this! ] |