Re: Question about Name Hiding concept

From:

"Victor Bazarov" <v.Abazarov@comAcast.net>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.c++

Date:

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 17:19:57 -0500

Message-ID:

<fmr8me$cri$1@news.datemas.de>

developer.new wrote:

I have a question regarding this concept I learned about recently:
Name Hiding. [..]

class Base {
public:
int f () { cout << "Base::f_int" << endl; return 1; }
int f (string s_) { cout << "Base::f_str" << endl; return 1; }
};

class Derived : public Base {
public:
int f() { cout << "Derived::f_int" << endl; return 1;}
};

int main() {
string str_ = "blahhh";
Derived d1;
d1.f();
d1.f(str_); //Gives compilation error!!!!!!
d1.Base::f(str_); //This of course, works.

return 0;
}

Going by how C++ uses name mangling to create unique function names, I
thought it would be possible to access the Base class "int f (string)"
function directly from the derived object.

"Possible" does not necessarily mean "good". Name hiding does not
just come into play with classes. Any time you declare an object
in some scope with the same name as another object declared in the
outer scope, the outer object's name is _hidden_ by the name of the
newly declared object.

Any idea why this cannot be done? I know it's a not a good practice to
have functions with duplicate names and all that. But my question is
more about inheritance. Why does this function become inaccessible
from the derived class?

It does not become inaccessible. You show in the code above that
it _is_ accessible. You just have to use a differen syntax to
let the compiler find it.

Have you tried looking in the archives for any explanation about
name hiding? This "issue" comes up periodically, and repeating
what's been told countless times seems really rather unnecessary.

V
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