Thread: Is this bad programming practice?

Is it bad programming practice to make a class that has a protected Constructor/Destructor?

I want this class to be like an abstract class (can't create instance) but it will not have any pure virtual (abstract) methods, only methods that will be derrived by other classes and methods that will be used by derived classes.

Thanks,

In C++ Common Knowledge Item 33, Stephen Dewhurst suggests that if you have "no reasonable candidate for a pure virtual function but still want the class to act like abstract base", you can either make its default and copy constructor protected, or you can make its destructor a pure virtual, in which case it does not matter if it is public or protected. If you choose the latter, remember to implement the base class destructor anyway, as the derived class destructor will still call it implicitly.