How is inheritance implemented at the memory level?

Question

Suppose I have

class A           { public: void print(){cout<<"A"; }};
class B: public A { public: void print(){cout<<"B"; }};
class C: public A {                                  };

How is inheritance implemented at the memory level?

Does C copy print() code to itself or does it have a pointer to the it that points somewhere in A part of the code?

How does the same thing happen when we override the previous definition, for example in B (at the memory level)?

Answer 1

Compilers are allowed to implement this however they choose. But they generally follow CFront's old implementation.

For classes/objects without inheritance

Consider:

#include <iostream>

class A {
    void foo()
    {
        std::cout << "foo\n";
    }

    static int bar()
    {
        return 42;
    }
};

A a;
a.foo();
A::bar();

The compiler changes those last three lines into something similar to:

struct A a = <compiler-generated constructor>;
A_foo(a); // the "a" parameter is the "this" pointer, there are not objects as far as
          // assembly code is concerned, instead member functions (i.e., methods) are
          // simply functions that take a hidden this pointer

A_bar();  // since bar() is static, there is no need to pass the this pointer

Once upon a time I would have guessed that this was handled with pointers-to-functions in each A object created. However, that approach would mean that every A object would contain identical information (pointer to the same function) which would waste a lot of space. It's easy enough for the compiler to take care of these details.

For classes/objects with non-virtual inheritance

Of course, that wasn't really what you asked. But we can extend this to inheritance, and it's what you'd expect:

class B : public A {
    void blarg()
    {
        // who knows, something goes here
    }

    int bar()
    {
        return 5;
    }
};

B b;
b.blarg();
b.foo();
b.bar();

The compiler turns the last four lines into something like:

struct B b = <compiler-generated constructor>
B_blarg(b);
A_foo(b.A_portion_of_object);
B_bar(b);

Notes on virtual methods

Things get a little trickier when you talk about virtual methods. In that case, each class gets a class-specific array of pointers-to-functions, one such pointer for each virtual function. This array is called the vtable ("virtual table"), and each object created has a pointer to the relevant vtable. Calls to virtual functions are resolved by looking up the correct function to call in the vtable.