Question

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Prefer composition over inheritance?

A general question which I stumbled upon several times recently: What are the advantages and disadvantages of deriving as opposed to containing?

To be more specific:

class A : public std::vector<int> {};

or

class B {public: std::vector<int> elem;}

?

Of course in a production code I would declare elem as private and implement public getters and setters.

Is there a general recommendation?

Answer 1

The general recommendation is to not derive from standard library containers. See also this questions answers.

The first answer to this question gives a note on the Liskov substitution principle which could be your answer.

Substitutability is a principle in object-oriented programming. It states that, in a computer program, if S is a subtype of T, then objects of type T may be replaced with objects of type S (i.e., objects of type S may be substituted for objects of type T) without altering any of the desirable properties of that program (correctness, task performed, etc.).