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

As has been pointed out, the objects are created base-down upon construction. When the base object is being constructed, the derived object does not exist yet, so a virtual function override cannot work.

However, this can be solved with polymorphic getters that use static polymorphism instead of virtual functions if your getters return constants, or otherwise can be expressed in a static member function, This example uses CRTP (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curiously_recurring_template_pattern).

template
class Base
{
public:
    inline Base() :
    foo(DerivedClass::getFoo())
    {}

    inline int fooSq() {
        return foo * foo;
    }

    const int foo;
};

class A : public Base
{
public:
    inline static int getFoo() { return 1; }
};

class B : public Base
{
public:
    inline static int getFoo() { return 2; }
};

class C : public Base
{
public:
    inline static int getFoo() { return 3; }
};

int main()
{
    A a;
    B b;
    C c;

    std::cout << a.fooSq() << ", " << b.fooSq() << ", " << c.fooSq() << std::endl;

    return 0;
}

With the use of static polymorphism, the base class knows which class' getter to call as the information is provided at compile-time.