"Victor Bazarov" <v.Abazarov@comAcast.net> wrote in news:fu55l2$gmc$1
@news.datemas.de:
2. Derive a class from vector (from googling people seem to think
this is a bad idea)
It depends. If your new container is not going to "specialise" the
vector (so to speak), then derive away. Inheritance is a mechanism
and the usefulness of it is in the eye of the beholder.
To expand a bit on this. The "problem" with inheriting from
std::vector is that it doesn't have a virtual interface and
especially it doesn't have a virtual destructor. If you don't add
any additional state information, then it doesn't matter much, but if
you do add more variables and maybe tweak a method or two, then you
are in a situation where you can "accidentally" pass your new vector
to a routine which expects a std::vector and things can go really
bad. For example, the routine swaps your vector with a new one in
the attempt to implement strong type safety. Now your new vector gets
destroyed with the std destructor and you leak memory, fault or
something more subtle. Bad news. On the otherhand, if you are just
adding some functions and just want a way to keep them all in one
spot, then you are probably ok. Delegation and private inheritance
solve this by not letting you pass your new collection as a
std::vector.
.... at a price of having to re-implement all member functions from