Comments on: Generic containers http://www.mycplus.com/tutorials/cplusplus-programming-tutorials/generic-containers/ C and C++ Programming Tutorials and Source code Sat, 30 Mar 2013 10:31:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.4.1 By: Jimson http://www.mycplus.com/tutorials/cplusplus-programming-tutorials/generic-containers/comment-page-1/#comment-15872 Jimson Wed, 11 Jul 2007 18:35:20 +0000 http://www.mycplus.com/?p=378#comment-15872 Sorry to disappoint you, but this is actually bull. STL containers are not meant to be used as base classes. There are no virtual functions to overwrite, so you can't alter the functionality. Data members are private, so no luck there either - these two points are make container inheritance questionable, but the fact that no virtual destructor is offered makes it just plain wrong. Deleting a derived class via a pointer to the container base class will result in undefined behaviour. If you want to add data members, just use composition. If you want to add functionality, write a new algorithm, but don't inherit from STL containers. You might want to look this issue up, the internet is actually full of advice on this, as many novice STL users make this mistake... Sorry to disappoint you, but this is actually bull. STL containers are not meant to be used as base classes. There are no virtual functions to overwrite, so you can’t alter the functionality. Data members are private, so no luck there either – these two points are make container inheritance questionable, but the fact that no virtual destructor is offered makes it just plain wrong. Deleting a derived class via a pointer to the container base class will result in undefined behaviour.

If you want to add data members, just use composition. If you want to add functionality, write a new algorithm, but don’t inherit from STL containers.

You might want to look this issue up, the internet is actually full of advice on this, as many novice STL users make this mistake…

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