Re: Possible to require overloading of a non-pure method?

From:
"Thomas J. Gritzan" <phygon_antispam@gmx.de>
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Fri, 25 Apr 2008 17:37:32 +0200
Message-ID:
<fustsj$7iu$1@newsreader2.netcologne.de>
[rob desbois] schrieb:

On Apr 25, 12:46 pm, Pete Becker <p...@versatilecoding.com> wrote:

On 2008-04-25 06:40:20 -0400, "[rob desbois]" <rob.desb...@gmail.com> said:

Hi all, I have a set of classes which implement the virtual
constructor idiom.
I had a slicing problem which resulted when I forgot to override the
clone() function in a derived class.
Is there something (other than documentation) that I can do to prevent
this from happening again?

Unit testing and code reviews.


Allow me to clarify. I meant is there any language construct which can
enforce this requirement.

A unit test wouldn't have helped -- I'd have had to remember to write
a unit test for the new class's clone() method ensuring that the
returned pointer is castable to a pointer to the new derived type. If
I'd have remembered that I'd have remembered to code the clone method
anyway.


"Design by Contract".

Something like (untestet):

class Base
{
public:
    Base* clone() const
    {
       Base* p = doClone();
       assert(typeid(*p) == typeid(*this));
       return p;
    }

private:
    Base* doClone() const
    {
       return new Base(*this);
    }
}

--
Thomas

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