Re: Inheritance question: best wrapper for copying base pointer?

From:

Kai-Uwe Bux <jkherciueh@gmx.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Fri, 02 Jun 2006 15:29:14 -0400

Message-ID:

<12814cacf997ia4@corp.supernews.com>

mrstephengross wrote:

Hi folks... I've got a simple inheritance system (base class & 2
derived classes). In essence it looks like this:

class Base { public:
  virtual ~Base() { };
  virtual void required_function() = 0; };

class Derived1 : public Base { public:
  virtual void required_function() { }
  int x;};

class Derived2 : public Base { public:
  virtual void required_function() { }
  int y;};

I want to store Base*'s in another struct, like so:

struct SomeStruct { Base * base; };

I want to write a copy constructor for SomeStruct so that the Base* is
deep-copied. I know there are a bunch of pointer wrappers out there for
doing so (auto_ptr, etc.). What's the simplest one to use for this
purpose?

Google for copy_ptr or clone_ptr in this group and in
comp.lang.c++.moderated. You will find that Axter and myself have put code
to illustrate how those pointers can be implemented. You can find more
refined versions of his on www.axter.com.

Best

Kai-Uwe Bux