How do you handle a "cannot instantiate abstract class" error in C++?

Question

How do you handle a "cannot instantiate abstract class" error in C++? I have looked at some of the similar errors here and none of them seem to be exactly the same or problem that I am having. But, then again, I will admit that there are several to go over. Here is the compile error:

This leads me to this page: http://msdn.microsoft.com/query/dev10.query?appId=Dev10IDEF1&l=EN-US&k=k(C2259);k(VS.ERRORLIST)&rd=true Compile Error C2259 is from a C++ program but the page calls the abstract class an "interface":

Whenever you derive from an interface and implement the interface methods in the derived class with access permissions other than public, you may receive C2259. This occurs because the compiler expects the interface methods implemented in the derived class to have public access. When you implement the member functions for an interface with more restrictive access permissions, the compiler does not consider them to be implementations for the interface methods defined in the interface, which in turn makes the derived class an abstract class.

There are two possible workarounds for the problem:

Make the access permissions public for the implemented methods.

Use the scope resolution operator for the interface methods implemented in the derived class to qualify the implemented method name with the name of the interface.

The bad news is that I have already made all of the methods public in the class:

class AmbientOccluder: public Light {
    public:

        AmbientOccluder(void); 

Answer 1

The error means there are some methods of the class that aren't implemented. You cannot instantiate such a class, so there isn't anything you can do, other than implement all of the methods of the class.

On the other hand, a common pattern is to instantiate a concrete class and assign it to a pointer of an abstract base class:

class Abstract { /* stuff */ 4};
class Derived : virtual public Abstract { /* implement Abstract's methods */ };

Abstract* pAbs = new Derived; // OK

Just an aside, to avoid memory management issues with the above line, you could consider using a smart pointer such as std::unique_ptr:

std::unique_ptr<Abstract> pAbs(new Derived);

Answer 2

Visual Studio's Error List pane only shows you the first line of the error. Invoke View>Output and I bet you'll see something like:

c:\path\to\your\code.cpp(42): error C2259: 'AmbientOccluder' : cannot instantiate abstract class
          due to following members:
          'ULONG MysteryUnimplementedMethod(void)' : is abstract
          c:\path\to\some\include.h(8) : see declaration of 'MysteryUnimplementedMethod'

Answer 3

An abstract class cannot be instantiated by definition. In order to use this class, you must create a concrete subclass which implements all virtual functions of the class. In this case, you most likely have not implemented all the virtual functions declared in Light. This means that AmbientOccluder defaults to an abstract class. For us to further help you, you should include the details of the Light class.