On Tuesday, 1 April 2014 at 09:12:41 UTC, John Colvin wrote:
Also, bear in mind that polymorphism is one-way: you can call
base class methods through an inherited class reference, but
not the other way around.
Sorry, I should clarify that:
Given an inheritance tree with the base class class at the
bottom, calls can always be made down the tree (inheriting class
reference calling method in inherited class), but you can only
call up the tree via overriden virtual functions (inherited class
reference calling inheriting class functions).
A new method that isn't present in the base class is by
definition not overriding anything in the base class. Therefore
you cannot call it from a base class reference, that would mean
moving up the inheritance tree.
