Calling virtual functions inside constructors

Question

Suppose I have two C++ classes:

class A
{
public:
  A() { fn(); }

  virtual void fn() { _n = 1; }
  int getn() { return _n; }

protected:
  int _n;
};

clas         


        

Answer 1

The vtables are created by the compiler. A class object has a pointer to its vtable. When it starts life, that vtable pointer points to the vtable of the base class. At the end of the constructor code, the compiler generates code to re-point the vtable pointer to the actual vtable for the class. This ensures that constructor code that calls virtual functions calls the base class implementations of those functions, not the override in the class.