A Tour of C++, 2nd Edition

4

Classes

Those types are not “abstract”; they are as real as int and float.

– Doug McIlroy

• Introduction

• Concrete Types

  An Arithmetic Type; A Container; Initializing Containers

• Abstract Types

• Virtual Functions

• Class Hierarchies

  Benefits from Hierarchies; Hierarchy Navigation; Avoiding Resource Leaks

• Advice

4.1 Introduction

This chapter and the next three aim to give you an idea of C++’s support for abstraction and resource management without going into a lot of detail:

• This chapter informally presents ways of defining and using new types (user-defined types). In particular, it presents the basic properties, implementation techniques, and language facilities used for concrete classes, abstract classes, and class hierarchies.

• Chapter 5 presents ...