Thinking in C++ Notes (14)

Chapter 14: Inheritance & Composition

Y is inherited from X then all private elements
all of the public members in the base class
constructors of base-class objects and member
order of constructor & destructor calls
- construction starts at the very root of the
- the destructors are called in exactly the
- the order of constructor calls for member

providing the exact signature and return type in the derived class
anytime you redefine an overloaded function name from the base class, all

constructors and destructors don't automatically inherit and must be created
operator= doesn't inherit because it performs a constructor-like activity,
in the copy-constructor definition of the class, you must explicitly call
in the operator= definition of the class, you must explicitly call the

Composition is used when you want the features of an existing class inside
The is-a relationship is expressed with inheritance and the has-a

automatic type conversion happens only in function calls, not during member
when you inherit privately, the object cannot be treated as a instance of
private inheritance is included in C++ for completeness, but if for no other
private inheritance is useful when you want to hide part of the
you can public privately inherited members by declare "using base::member"
"protected" means " this is private as far as the class user is concerned,

upcasting is always safe because you're going from a more specific type to a
you must remember to call the base-class copy-constructor whenever you write
upcasting occurs: during the function call or during a simple assignment to

Last modified on 2007-06-27 of X are still private in Y will be private in the derived class if the base class were not preceded by public objects must be called in the constructor initializer list class hierarchy, and that at each level the base class constructor is called first, followed by the member object constructors reverse order of the constructors objects is determined by the order they declared in the class definition as in the base class definition is called redefining(for ordinary member function) or overriding(virtual function) the other versions are automatically hidden in the new class specially for each derived class but other operators are automatically inherited. the copy-constructor of the member object(or base-class object) or the default constructor will be automatically called instead operator= of the member object(or base-class object) or no assignment at all happens for the member object your new class, but not its interface relationship is expressed with composition selection.(P607) the base class reason than to reduce confusion, you will usually want to use composition rather than private inheritance functionality of the base class in the public section but available to anyone who inherits from this class" more general type your own copy-constructor a pointer or reference