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From: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.c++
Subject: Re: Base class access: by name only?
Message-ID: <59306@microsoft.UUCP>
Date: 26 Nov 90 19:25:20 GMT
References: <1990Nov19.012937.27283@Neon.Stanford.EDU>
Reply-To: jimad@microsoft.UUCP (Jim ADCOCK)
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 36

In article <1990Nov19.012937.27283@Neon.Stanford.EDU> philip@pescadero.stanford.edu writes:
|In some other object-oriented languages, it is possible to access the
|superclass (base class in C++) without using its name. In C++, it seems
|you have to use the base class name to get to a member redefined in the
|current class. This strikes me as inconvenient; if I redesign my class
|hierarchy, I have to remember to edit such occurences of base class names
|as needed. Am I missing something, 

Yes, languages that allow accessing a superclass without using its name
only allow single superclasses.  If you have multiple superclasses you
need to be able to specify *which* super class -- the obvious way to do
this is by using the superclasses name.  Which is exactly the convention
C++ chose.

|or is this a serious limitation?

Nor is this a serious limitation.  Many C++ programmers who have chosen
to restrict themselves to using single inheritence [most of these people
presumably being from a Smalltalk background] then choose to define "super"
for use in their derivations:

class Base
{
	// ....
};

#define SUPER base

class derived: public SUPER
{
//	Use the SUPER word
};

Seems to me that if one refactors the class heirachy changing super
classes, hiding the super class name is going to be the *least" of
one's problems!