Publicly inheriting is a problem for all the reasons others have stated, namely that your container can be upcasted to the base class which does not have a virtual destructor or virtual assignment operator, which can lead to slicing problems.
Privately inheriting, on the other hand, is less of an issue. Consider the following example:
#include <vector>
#include <iostream>
// private inheritance, nobody else knows about the inheritance, so nobody is upcasting my
// container to a std::vector
template <class T> class MyVector : private std::vector<T>
{
private:
// in case I changed to boost or something later, I don't have to update everything below
typedef std::vector<T> base_vector;
public:
typedef typename base_vector::size_type size_type;
typedef typename base_vector::iterator iterator;
typedef typename base_vector::const_iterator const_iterator;
using base_vector::operator[];
using base_vector::begin;
using base_vector::clear;
using base_vector::end;
using base_vector::erase;
using base_vector::push_back;
using base_vector::reserve;
using base_vector::resize;
using base_vector::size;
// custom extension
void reverse()
{
std::reverse(this->begin(), this->end());
}
void print_to_console()
{
for (auto it = this->begin(); it != this->end(); ++it)
{
std::cout << *it << '\n';
}
}
};
int main(int argc, char** argv)
{
MyVector<int> intArray;
intArray.resize(10);
for (int i = 0; i < 10; ++i)
{
intArray[i] = i + 1;
}
intArray.print_to_console();
intArray.reverse();
intArray.print_to_console();
for (auto it = intArray.begin(); it != intArray.end();)
{
it = intArray.erase(it);
}
intArray.print_to_console();
return 0;
}
OUTPUT:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
10
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
Clean and simple, and gives you the freedom to extend std containers without much effort.
And if you think about doing something silly, like this:
std::vector<int>* stdVector = &intArray;
You get this:
error C2243: 'type cast': conversion from 'MyVector<int> *' to 'std::vector<T,std::allocator<_Ty>> *' exists, but is inaccessible
