Thread: Checking Object's class.

Yes, as is implied by the page I linked. Anyway, it's static methods returning objects of your class.

I still find it a bit confusing, since even though there is no default constructor in the linked example, you can make a stack object. And if you can make a stack object using a (magic) default constructor like that, I don't see how that prevents inheritance.

Originally Posted by whiteflags

Yes, as is implied by the page I linked. Anyway, it's static methods returning objects of your class.

I still find it a bit confusing, since even though there is no default constructor in the linked example, you can make a stack object. And if you can make a stack object using a (magic) default constructor like that, I don't see how that prevents inheritance.

Good point. You'd have to make the copy constructor protected/private, which would severely limit what you could do with the object (couldn't be stored in a vector, for instance).

I wonder if C++0x fixes this because otherwise inheritance in C++ is poorly conceived.

Originally Posted by whiteflags

I wonder if C++0x fixes this because otherwise inheritance in C++ is poorly conceived.

I don't see how it could, honestly. Even so, to the contrary I would say that C++ has a pretty good inheritance scheme (much better than Java or C#, for sure).

I can't talk about other systems, but making sure you don't have derived objects sure is a song and dance in C++. I just wish there were a keyword or something so it's completely clear what the intentions are of the person writing the class.

Originally Posted by whiteflags

I can't talk about other systems, but making sure you don't have derived objects sure is a song and dance in C++. I just wish there were a keyword or something so it's completely clear what the intentions are of the person writing the class.

On second thought, I'm going to agree with you there. It might be useful in some cases. And now that I think about it, I suppose it wouldn't be so hard to implement, after all.

Originally Posted by laserlight

Stroustrup provides another "song and dance" solution that does not have such a limitation in his answer to the FAQ Can I stop people deriving from my class?.

Personally, unless documented otherwise, I stick to the rule that a class with no virtual functions should not be used as a base class. But yeah, having the rule enforced by a language feature would probably be good.

Interesting. That's a very clean solution, actually. Thanks for that out, Laserlight.