Re: Reducing the virtual function table size...

From:
peter koch <peter.koch.larsen@gmail.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
17 Apr 2007 11:17:37 -0700
Message-ID:
<1176833857.521036.138870@y5g2000hsa.googlegroups.com>
On 17 Apr., 03:40, "Chris Thomasson" <cris...@comcast.net> wrote:

Consider an an object that that can has 7 or 8 functions. If you create an
abstract base class for the "interface" of the object, well, that means 7 or
8 pure virtual functions right?

I dont see why. As others have explained, the vtable is a per class
entity: the instance just has a pointer to the vtable.

Well, IMHO, that's way too much... I was
wondering if the following technique is "frowned" upon:

Not at all. Actually, I'd often prefer virtual to be private.

<pseudo-code>
_____________
typedef struct ... vztimespec_t;

class condmutex_base {
 public:
  enum wait_e {
    WAITLOCK, TRYLOCK, WAITCOND
  };

  enum wake_e {
    UNLOCK, SIGNAL, BROADCAST
  };

protected:
  condmutex_base() {}

public:
  virtual ~condmutex_base() {}

private:
  virtual bool wait(wait_e, vztimespec_t const*) = 0;
  virtual bool wake(wake_e) = 0;

public:
  inline void unlock() { wake(wake_e::UNLOCK); }
  inline void waitlock() { wait(wait_e::WAITLOCK, 0); }
  inline void waitcond() { wait(wait_e::WAITCOND, 0); }
  inline bool trylock() { return wait(wait_e::TRYLOCK, 0); }
  inline bool signal() { return wake(wake_e::SIGNAL); }
  inline bool broadcast() { return wake(wake_e::BROADCAST); }

  inline bool timedwaitcond(vztimespec_t const *tspec) {
    return wait(wait_e::WAITCOND, tspec);
  }};

_____________

I only have 2 virtual functions now, not counting dtor, ect... Well, 2 is
better than 7, or 8?

It is better in the sense, that in reality only two virtual functions
are needed. The extra storage cost of the extra virtual functions
should not matter in anything but the most extreme cases.

/Peter

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