inherited classes and stl container

Hi, i was working on simple hospital program.

I got a patient base class,and from the base class i got three types of patients classes.(namely in-patient,day-patient,out-patient).

I got a doctor class,and i need to use a stl container to store the patients treated by the doctor.the doctor treats all 3 types of patients?
i tried vector,but vector allows me to to store 1 type of patient only.

what type of stl container to use so i can store all the 3types of patients? can some one guide ?

Thanking you very much,
Rahul SK

Polymorphism works with pointers (to the base class), which you should store in the vector.

anon,thanx for your reply.but i am still confused.
do you mind to give me some example ?

Code:

---

class base {
public:
...
};

class derived : public base {
..
};

std::vector <base> m_list;

---

The last line should be:

Code:

---

std::vector <base*> patient;

---

if you want polymorphism to work. Which seems to be your goal, as you probably want to do something like this regardless of the type of the patient:

Code:

---

patient[x]->getTreatment(doctor);

---

Managing vectors of pointers is somewhat unreliable. A better choice would be a Boost.PtrContainer ptr_vector.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by CornedBee

Managing vectors of pointers is somewhat unreliable. A better choice would be a Boost.PtrContainer ptr_vector.

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Whats the difference betwen them?

ptr_vector manages the lifetime of the pointed-to objects automatically. You don't have to call delete yourself.
At the same time, it avoids the overhead of shared_ptr that would get if you used a vector of shared_ptrs, which is often not necessary.

So when you have to work with polymorphism its better to use ptr_vector instead of shared_ptr vector?

It depends - does anyone apart from the container ever "own" the object? Then use shared_ptr.