Using "super" in C++

Question

Bjarne Stroustrup mentions in Design and Evolution of C++ that super as a keyword was considered by the ISO C++ Standards committee the first time C++ was standardized.

Dag Bruck proposed this extension, calling the base class "inherited." The proposal mentioned the multiple inheritance issue, and would have flagged ambiguous uses. Even Stroustrup was convinced.

After discussion, Dag Bruck (yes, the same person making the proposal) wrote that the proposal was implementable, technically sound, and free of major flaws, and handled multiple inheritance. On the other hand, there wasn't enough bang for the buck, and the committee should handle a thornier problem.

Michael Tiemann arrived late, and then showed that a typedef'ed super would work just fine, using the same technique that was asked about in this post.

So, no, this will probably never get standardized.

If you don't have a copy, Design and Evolution is well worth the cover price. Used copies can be had for about $10.

I've always used "inherited" rather than super. (Probably due to a Delphi background), and I always make it private, to avoid the problem when the 'inherited' is erroneously omitted from a class but a subclass tries to use it.

class MyClass : public MyBase
{
private:  // Prevents erroneous use by other classes.
  typedef MyBase inherited;
...

My standard 'code template' for creating new classes includes the typedef, so I have little opportunity to accidentally omit it.

I don't think the chained "super::super" suggestion is a good idea- If you're doing that, you're probably tied in very hard to a particular hierarchy, and changing it will likely break stuff badly.

One problem with this is that if you forget to (re-)define super for derived classes, then any call to super::something will compile fine but will probably not call the desired function.

For example:

class Base
{
public:  virtual void foo() { ... }
};

class Derived: public Base
{
public:
    typedef Base super;
    virtual void foo()
    {
        super::foo();   // call superclass implementation

        // do other stuff
        ...
    }
};

class DerivedAgain: public Derived
{
public:
    virtual void foo()
    {
        // Call superclass function
        super::foo();    // oops, calls Base::foo() rather than Derived::foo()

        ...
    }
};

(As pointed out by Martin York in the comments to this answer, this problem can be eliminated by making the typedef private rather than public or protected.)

FWIW Microsoft has added an extension for __super in their compiler.