Question

I just discovered that C++/CLI has a keyword that is not present (AFAIK) on standard C++: override.

I don’t know much about C++/CLI, so, can someone explain for which purpose is it included there, and if is it a desirable feature to be added to C++?

Answer 1

override is a special keyword extension from Microsoft that can be used in C++/CLI and Visual C++ implementations. It is similar to the @Override annotation in Java or override in C#, and provides better compile time checks just in case you didn’t override something you meant to.

From the first link:

override indicates that a member of a managed type must override a base class or a base interface member. If there is no member to override, the compiler will generate an error.

override is also valid when compiling for native targets (without /clr). See Override Specifiers and Native Compilations for more information.

override is a context-sensitive keyword. See Context-Sensitive Keywords for more information.

As of the C++11 standard, the override specifier is now a standardized keyword. Support is still limited, and as per this page from Apache StdCxx, override is supported by GCC 4.7+, Intel C++ 12.0+, and Visual C++ 2012 (with pre-standardization support in Visual C++ 2005).