virtual function that is const in the base class and not const in the derived

Question

Can anyone explain the output of the following code?

#include 
#include 
class Animal
{
public:
    Animal(const std::string &          


        

Answer 1

You have two different versions of printMessage, one which is const and one which isn't. The two are unrelated, even though they have the same name. The new function in Cow hides the one in Animal, so when you call it directly the compiler only considers the Cow version.