Store derived class objects in base class variables

by

What you are seeing is Object Slicing.
You are storing object of Derived class in an vector which is supposed to store objects of Base class, this leads to Object slicing and the derived class specific members of the object being stored get sliced off, thus the object stored in the vector just acts as object of Base class.

Solution:

You should store pointer to object of Base class in the vector: 

vector<Base*>

By storing a pointer to Base class there would be no slicing and you can achieve the desired polymorphic behavior as well.
Since you ask for a C++ish way of doing this, the right approach is to use a suitable Smart pointer instead of storing a raw pointer in the vector. That will ensure you do not have to manually manage the memory, RAII will do that for you automatically.

More Related Contents:

  1. c++: can vector contain objects of type Derived?
  2. Title Name not showing and background color not changing
  3. can a pure virtual function has parameters?
  4. No member named ” in ”. Why did it happen and how do I fix it?
  5. What is object slicing?
  6. Why do we need virtual functions in C++?
  7. Why doesn’t polymorphism work without pointers/references?
  8. Polymorphism in C++
  9. difference between a pointer and reference parameter?
  10. Templates polymorphism
  11. Where do “pure virtual function call” crashes come from?
  12. Vectors and polymorphism in C++
  13. Overriding a Base’s Overloaded Function in C++ [duplicate]
  14. How to copy/create derived class instance from a pointer to a polymorphic base class?
  15. Private virtual method in C++
  16. How can I store objects of differing types in a C++ container?
  17. How can I use polymorphic attributes with boost::spirit::qi parsers?
  18. Run an Application in GDB Until an Exception Occurs
  19. Vector that can have 3 different data types C++
  20. C++ abstract class without pure virtual functions?
  21. C++: How to implement polymorphic object creator to populate a table
  22. mixing templates with polymorphism
  23. Size of the classes in case of virtual inheritance
  24. c++ standard practice: virtual interface classes vs. templates
  25. C++: Why does a struct\class need a virtual method in order to be polymorphic?
  26. Double dispatch/multimethods in C++
  27. How does the C++ compiler know which implementation of a virtual function to call?
  28. list of polymorphic objects
  29. Can I get polymorphic behavior without using virtual functions?
  30. Polymorphism & Pointers to arrays [duplicate]

Leave a Comment