Inherited member from an abstract class can't be initialized by the inherited constructor

Question

class CarPart
{
public:
    CarPart(): name(""), price(0) {}
    virtual int getPrice() = 0;//{return price;}
protected:
    int price;
    string name;
};

class Tire: public CarPart
{
public:
    virtual int getPrice() {return price;}
    Tire(): CarPart(), name("Tire"), price(50)
    {}
};

Visual 2010 tells me name and price are not members of deriv, but they are inherited (error c2614). What am I doing wrong ?

Answer 1

You cannot initialize members that is not an immediate member of your class. n is not an immediate member of deriv, it's an immediate member of base.

However, n is accessible to deriv, so you can always assign it in your deriv constructor, but you should really initialize it in the base constructor.

Also, you can't have virtual constructors. Did you mean to use virtual destructors?

class base
{
public:
    base() : n(0) {} // Are you sure you don't want this?
    virtual void show() = 0;
protected:
    int n;
};

class deriv : public base
{
public:
    deriv() 
    {
        n = 0;
    }

    virtual void show() {}
};

EDIT (A response to the OP's edit): You don't need virtual methods for this:

class CarPart
{
public:
    CarPart(const char* newName, int newPrice) : name(newName), price(newPrice) {}

    const std::string& GetName() const { return name; }
    int GetPrice() const               { return price; }
private:
    std::string name;
    int price;
};

class Tire : public CarPart
{
public:
    Tire() : CarPart("Tire", 50) {}
};

Assuming that all your CarParts has to have a name and a price, this should be more than sufficient.