double-dispatch

I have a question on C++ double dispatch. In the code below, I want the results from the second set to match the results from the first set. I don't know the actual type (unless I try dynamic_cast) but I do know that the object inherited from the BaseClass type. What is the most efficient (performance-wise) way to accomplish this? After googling around for a while I found out about double dispatch and the loki multimethods. The problem I have with the Shape examples is that in my application, Processor and BaseClass are entirely independent and don't have a common method that they can call in

I try to understand how double dispatch works. I created an example where a monster and a warrior derived from the abstract class Creature could fight. The class Creature has method "fight", which is defined in derived classes, and in each derived class is defined what happens if warrior fights with warrior or with monster etc. I wrote the following code: #include<iostream> using namespace std; class Monster; class Warrior; class Creature{ public: virtual void fight(Creature&) =0; }; class Monster: public Creature{ void fightwho(Warrior& w) {cout<<"Monster versus Warrior"<<endl; } void

Can anybody explain in detail the reason the overloaded method print(Parent parent) is invoked when working with Child instance in my test piece of code? Any pecularities of virtual methods or methods overloading/resolution in Java involved here? Any direct reference to Java Lang Spec? Which term describes this behaviour? Thanks a lot. public class InheritancePlay { public static class Parent { public void doJob(Worker worker) { System.out.println("this is " + this.getClass().getName()); worker.print(this); } } public static class Child extends Parent { } public static class Worker { public

I have heard/read the term but don't quite understand what it means. When should I use this technique and how would I use it? Can anyone provide a good code sample? The visitor pattern is a way of doing double-dispatch in an object-oriented way. It's useful for when you want to choose which method to use for a given argument based on its type at runtime rather than compile time. Double dispatch is a special case of multiple dispatch . When you call a virtual method on an object, that's considered single-dispatch because which actual method is called depends on the type of the single object.