Question

I have trouble when designing classes like this

class C1 {
public:
  void foo();
}

class C2 {
public:
  void foo();
}

C1 and C2 has the same method foo(),

class Derived1 : public Base {
public:
  void Update() {
    member.foo();
  }
private:    
  C1 member;
}

class Derived2 : public Base {
public:
  void Update() {
    member.foo(); 
  }
private:    
  C2 member;
}

Update() of both Derived class are exactly the same, but the type of member is different.
So i have to copy the Update implement for every new derived class.

Is that a way to reduce this code duplication? I only come out with a solution with macro.
I think there is a more elegant way to solve this with template but I can not figure it out..

EDIT:
thanks a lot guys but i think i missed something..

1.I’m using c++

2.In reality each Derived class has about 5 members, they all afford the foo() method and are derived from the same base class. My situation is that i have already written a (very long) Update() method and it can work for every derived class without any modification. So i just copy and paste this Update() to every new class’s Update() and this lead to terrible code duplication. I wonder if there is a way in which i need not to rewrite the Update() too much and can reduce the duplication.

thx again

Answer 1

This is exactly the sort of application that class templates are designed for. They allow functions within a class to operate on different data types, without the need to copy algorithms and logic.

This Wikipedia page will give you a good overview of templates in programming.

Here’s the basic idea to get you started:

template  <class T>
class CTemplateBase
{
public:
    void Update()
    {
        member.foo();
    }
private:
    T member; // Generic type
}

class CDerived1 : public CTemplateBase<C1>
{
    // No common algorithms required here
}

class CDerived2 : public CTemplateBase<C2>
{
    // No common algorithms required here
}