Is it possible to apply inheritance to a Singleton class?

Question

Today I faced one question in interview. Is it possible to apply inheritance concept on Singleton Classes? I said since the constructor is private, we cannot extend that Singlet

Answer 1

Below is one implementation of singleton pattern explained in GOF about creating singleton with inheritance. Here the parent class should be modified to add a new derived class. Environment variable can be used to instantiate appropriate derived class constructor.

Mainfile – 1
#include 
#include 
#include "Singleton.h"
using namespace std;

int main(){

     Singleton::instant().print();
     cin.get();
}
Singleton.h
#pragma once
#include 
using std::cout;
class Singleton{
public:
    static Singleton & instant();
    virtual void print(){cout<<"Singleton";}
protected:
    Singleton(){};
private:
    static Singleton * instance_;
    Singleton(const Singleton & );
    void operator=(const Singleton & );

};

Singleton.cpp
#include "Singleton.h"
#include "Dotted.h"
Singleton * Singleton::instance_ = 0;
Singleton & Singleton::instant(){
    if (!instance_)
    {
        char * style = getenv("STYLE");
        if (style){
            if (strcmp(style,"dotted")==0)
            {
                instance_ = new Dotted();
                return *instance_; 
            }           else{
                instance_ = new Singleton();
                return *instance_;
            }       
        }

        else{
            instance_ = new Singleton();
            return *instance_;
        }
    }
    return *instance_;

}
Dotted.h

#pragma once
class Dotted;

class Dotted:public Singleton{
public:
    friend class Singleton;
    void print(){cout<<"Dotted";}
    private:
        Dotted(){};

};