C++ Call child function from parent [duplicate] - c++

Question

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call to pure virtual function from base class constructor
(8 answers)
Calling virtual functions inside constructors
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Closed 1 year ago.
I am trying to call an overriden function from the parent, and found out that it just crashes.
This is quite hard to describe, so here the minimal reproducible code:
#include <iostream>
class A
{
public:
A()
{
init1();
}
void init1()
{
printf("1");
init2();
printf("2");
}
virtual void init2() = 0;
};
class B : public A
{
public:
B()
: A()
{}
void init2() override
{
printf("hello");
}
};
int main()
{
B b;
return 0;
}
On MSVC 2019 it crashes, on http://cpp.sh/ it outputs "1" and then main() returns 0, but we never see "hello" or "2".
Why does it crash? What happens from a low level point of view? Is A trying to call its own init2()?
Is there a way of doing it, so I don't have to, in every derived class, add init2() in its constructor?

Answer 1

You can't call a derived class's overriden methods from within a base class constructor (or destructor). The derived class portion of the object doesn't exist yet.
So, to answer your questions:
yes A::A() is trying to call A::init2(), not B::init2(), and thus crashes from calling a pure virtual method.
There are ways (like via CRTP) for a base class constructor to call a derived class method, but doing so has limitations to it (ie, not being able to access any derived class data members since they still don't exist yet, only base class data members can be accessed). In your example, B::init2() doesn't access anyB data members, so it is possible for A::A() to call B::init2(), but in general you really need to wait for B to begin/finish constructing itself before you can safely call B::init2().