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The pointer to member operators . * and ->* are used to bind a pointer to a member of a specific class object. Because the precedence of () (function call operator) is higher than . * and ->* , you must use parentheses to call the function pointed to by ptf .
It is declared using the virtual keyword. It is used to tell the compiler to perform dynamic linkage or late binding on the function. There is a necessity to use the single pointer to refer to all the objects of the different classes. So, we create the pointer to the base class that refers to all the derived objects.
A virtual function is a member function that you expect to be redefined in derived classes. When you refer to a derived class object using a pointer or a reference to the base class, you can call a virtual function for that object and execute the derived class's version of the function.
You can use pointers to member functions in the same manner as pointers to functions. You can compare pointers to member functions, assign values to them, and use them to call member functions.
It works because the Standard says that's how it should happen. I did some tests with GCC, and it turns out for virtual functions, GCC stores the virtual table offset of the function in question, in bytes.
struct A { virtual void f() { } virtual void g() { } };
int main() {
union insp {
void (A::*pf)();
ptrdiff_t pd[2];
};
insp p[] = { { &A::f }, { &A::g } };
std::cout << p[0].pd[0] << " "
<< p[1].pd[0] << std::endl;
}
That program outputs 1 5 - the byte offsets of the virtual table entries of those two functions. It follows the Itanium C++ ABI, which specifies that.
Here is way too much information about member function pointers. There's some stuff about virtual functions under "The Well-Behaved Compilers", although IIRC when I read the article I was skimming that part, since the article is actually about implementing delegates in C++.
http://www.codeproject.com/KB/cpp/FastDelegate.aspx
The short answer is that it depends on the compiler, but one possibility is that the member function pointer is implemented as a struct containing a pointer to a "thunk" function which makes the virtual call.
I'm not entirely certain, but I think it's just regular polymorphic behavior. I think that &A::f actually means the address of the function pointer in the class's vtable, and that's why you aren't getting a compiler error. The space in the vtable is still allocated, and that is the location you are actually getting back.
This makes sense because derived classes essentially overwrite these values with pointers to their functions. This is why (a->*f)() works in your second example - f is referencing the vtable that is implemented in the derived class.
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