Question

I have this piece of code (contrived from my real-life trouble)

It cannot compile, complaining ExtendsB does not implement B::Run(A* a). However, it has no problems understanding the extension to A* Run();

class A { };

class ExtendsA : public A { };

class B
{
public:
    virtual ~B(){}  
    virtual void Run(A* a) = 0;
    virtual A* Run() = 0;
};

class ExtendsB : public B
{
public:
    virtual ~ExtendsB(){}

    // Not OK! It does not see it as an implementation of 
    // virtual void Run(A* a) = 0;
    virtual void Run(ExtendsA* ea) {}; 
    virtual ExtendsA* Run() { return new ExtendsA(); }; // OK
};

Why C++ allows to change the return type to a sub-class, but not the parameter type?

Is it a good rationale or just a missed point in the language specifications?

Answer 1

Why C++ allows to change the return type to a sub-class, but not the parameter type?

C++ standard allows you to use a Covariant return type while overidding virtual functions but does not allow you to modify the function parameters.And yes there is a good rationale behind it.

Rationale:

Overriding essentially means that either the Base class method or the Derived class method will be called at run-time depending on the actual object pointed by the pointer.
It implies that:
i.e: “Every instance where the Base class method can be called can be replaced by call to Derived class method without any change to calling code.”

If the above rule was not in place it would leave a window to break the existing code by addition of new functionality(new derived classes).

If you have a function prototype in derived class which differs from base class virtual function w.r.t parameters then the function does not override the base class function, since the above rule gets broken.

However, Covariant return types do not break this rule, because upcasting happens implicitly and a Base class pointer can always point to a derived class object without any casting, hence the Standard enforces this condition of covariant return types on return types.