Question

I create a parent class that calls it’s own virtual member. But this virtual member is overridden by child class.

class Parent {
public:
    void doSomething() {
        doVirtual();
    }
protected:
    virtual void doVirtual() {}
};

class Child : public Parent {
protected:
    virtual void doVirtual() {}
};

Parent *c = new Child();
c->doSomething();

And compile it with visual studio 2008, my question is:
When i execute code from IDE (start debugging), it calls child method, but when i run executable directly, it calls parent method. Am i doing something wrong here?

Answer 1

If the functions don’t do anything (or do exactly the same thing) how do you know that when you run the executable directly it calls the parent method?

Have the 2 functions actually do something different – the compiler might be ‘coalescing’ the functions if they’re identical (though I’d expect that to be less likely to happen in a debug build).

If this answer makes no sense, post an exact (copy-n-paste) compilable snippet so we can see exactly what’s happening.