Chapter Summary

The ideas of inheritance and dynamic binding are simple but powerful. Inheritance lets us write new classes that share behavior with their base class(es) but redefine that behavior as needed. Dynamic binding lets the compiler decide at run time which version of a function to run based on an object's dynamic type. The combination of inheritance and dynamic binding lets us write type-independent programs that have type-specific behavior.

In C++, dynamic binding applies only to functions declared as virtual when called through a reference or pointer. It is common for C++ programs to define handle classes to interface to an inheritance hierarchy. These classes allocate and manage pointers to objects in the inheritance hierarchy, thus obtaining dynamic behavior while shielding user code from having to deal with pointers.

Inherited objects are composed of base-class part(s) and a derived-class part. Inherited objects are constructed, copied, and assigned by constructing, copying, and assigning the base part(s) of the object before handling the derived part. Because a derived object contains a base part, it is possible to convert a reference or pointer to a derived type to a reference or pointer to its base type.

Base classes usually should define a virtual destructor even if the class otherwise has no need for a destructor. The destructor must be virtual if a pointer to a base is ever deleted when it actually addresses a derived-type object.