Interfaces and polymorphism producing a compiler warning

From:
franko.man@gmail.com
Newsgroups:
comp.lang.c++
Date:
Mon, 13 Apr 2009 18:33:52 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID:
<394b9243-6900-4821-b71e-9655b274086d@f19g2000yqo.googlegroups.com>
Disclaimer: I am a university student in a not-directly programming
related field, although I want to go into programming, so I have not
yet taken any real formal programming courses or training. If my
question seems simple or odd please forgive me! :)

I have been trying to expand my C++ knowledge by wrapping a C++/CLI
(Microsoft extension) class so that it can be used in unmanaged C++.
To my understanding, the only way to accomplish this is to create a
library containing an unmanaged interface to mixed wrapper classes
(i.e. classes containing gcroot<T^> items from vcclr.h). I have been
able to do this without problems; however, while attempting to make
the interface and wrapper classes polymorphic I am receiving compiler
warning that bug me.

Below is a minimal trivial example that illustrates the problem and
contains no C++/CLI (as that would be off-topic in this newsgroup).
The code has been compiled and run in Visual Studio 2008 Express
V9.0.30729.1 under Windows XP. The only warning is =93warning C4250:
'Derived' : inherits 'Base::Base::GetShort' via dominance=94, which can
be solved by including the GetShort() definition that is currently
commented out in the Derived class -- although this does not change
the behaviour of the code. I am hoping that there is a better way to
accomplish this so that I do not have to explicitly forward calls from
the derived functions to the base functions (as with non-trivial code
this would be very repetitive and prone to error). Any additional
nitpicks on my code would also be appreciated!

Thanks in advance,
Franko

class IBase
{
    public:
        virtual ~IBase() { }
        virtual short GetShort() const = 0;
};

class IDerived : public virtual IBase
{
    public:
        virtual int GetInt() const = 0;
};

class Base : public virtual IBase
{
    public:
        Base(short s) : m_s(s) { }
        virtual short GetShort() const
        {
            return m_s;
        }
    protected:
        short m_s;
};

class Derived : public virtual IDerived, private virtual Base
{
    public:
        Derived(int i, short s) : Base(s), m_i(i) { }
        virtual int GetInt() const
        {
            return m_i;
        }
        //virtual short GetShort() const
        //{
        // return Base::GetShort();
        //}
// warning C4250: 'Derived' : inherits 'Base::Base::GetShort' via
dominance
    private:
        int m_i;
};

IDerived* CreateDerived(int i, short s)
{
    return new Derived(i, s);
}

#include <iostream>
using std::ostream;
using std::cout;
using std::endl;

ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, IBase const * const pBase)
{
    return os << pBase->GetShort() << endl;
}

ostream& operator<<(ostream& os, IDerived const * const pDerived)
{
    IBase const * const pBase = pDerived;
    return os << pDerived->GetInt() << endl << pBase;
}

int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
    IDerived* pDerived = CreateDerived(5, 2);
    IBase* pBase = pDerived;

    cout << pDerived << endl;
    cout << pBase << endl;

    delete pDerived; // or delete pBase

    system("PAUSE");
}

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