Re: Deriving from concrete types

From:
Ulrich Eckhardt <eckhardt@satorlaser.com>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++.moderated
Date:
23 Jun 2006 05:59:45 -0400
Message-ID:
<5ifqm3-i4b.ln1@satorlaser.homedns.org>
Holger Sebert wrote:

I know that is in general a bad idea to derive from concrete types.


....because when you delete them via a pointer to the baseclass, the
destructor is not invoked polymorphically, leading to undefined behaviour.

However, I wonder if it is o.k. if the derived class does not add any data
members but only extends the interface.


Still undefined behaviour.

      SpecialIntVector v;
      v.resize( 1000 );
      v.doSomethingSpecial();

Where are the problems with this approach?


As said above. If that doesn't apply, there is still another question left:
why? std::vector has no virtual functions you could overwrite and no
protected members you would get access to, so what's the gain?

I'd rather do this:

   vector<float> v(1000);
   DoSomethingSpecial(v);

...or even this:

   vector<float> v(1000);
   DoSomethingSpecial(v.begin(), v.end());

...or perhaps the equivalent using ranges.

Uli

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