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Lecture

Object-Oriented Programming: Polymorphism and Pointers

Description

This lecture covers the fundamental concepts of object-oriented programming, focusing on polymorphism and pointers in C++. Topics include the resolution of dynamic links, virtual methods, abstract classes, heterogeneous collections, and the use of pointers. The instructor emphasizes working with pointers in a C-style and discusses the challenges related to object ownership.

Official source

Ontological neighbourhood

Theoretical computer science

Programming language theory: High-level programming languages

Related concepts (32)

Object-oriented programming

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or properties), and the code is in the form of procedures (often known as methods). A common feature of objects is that procedures (or methods) are attached to them and can access and modify the object's data fields. In this brand of OOP, there is usually a special name such as or used to refer to the current object.

Inheritance (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, inheritance is the mechanism of basing an object or class upon another object (prototype-based inheritance) or class (class-based inheritance), retaining similar implementation. Also defined as deriving new classes (sub classes) from existing ones such as super class or base class and then forming them into a hierarchy of classes. In most class-based object-oriented languages like C++, an object created through inheritance, a "child object", acquires all the properties and behaviors of the "parent object", with the exception of: constructors, destructors, overloaded operators and friend functions of the base class.

Interface (object-oriented programming)

In object-oriented programming, an interface or protocol type is a data type that acts as an abstraction of a class. It describes a set of method signatures, the implementations of which may be provided by multiple classes that are otherwise not necessarily related to each other. A class which provides the methods listed in a protocol is said to adopt the protocol, or to implement the interface. If objects are fully encapsulated then the protocol is the only way in which they may be accessed by other objects.

Object-oriented design

Object-oriented design (OOD) is the process of planning a system of interacting objects for the purpose of solving a software problem. It is one approach to software design. An object contains encapsulated data and procedures grouped together to represent an entity. The 'object interface' defines how the object can be interacted with. An object-oriented program is described by the interaction of these objects. Object-oriented design is the discipline of defining the objects and their interactions to solve a problem that was identified and documented during object-oriented analysis.

Pointer (computer programming)

In computer science, a pointer is an object in many programming languages that stores a memory address. This can be that of another value located in computer memory, or in some cases, that of memory-mapped computer hardware. A pointer references a location in memory, and obtaining the value stored at that location is known as dereferencing the pointer. As an analogy, a page number in a book's index could be considered a pointer to the corresponding page; dereferencing such a pointer would be done by flipping to the page with the given page number and reading the text found on that page.

Related lectures (32)

Abstract Data Structures in C++

Covers procedural and object-oriented programming, abstract data structures, templates, and the C++ standard library.

Polymorphism in Object-Oriented Programming: Inclusion Mechanism

Covers polymorphism in object-oriented programming, focusing on inclusion polymorphism and its implementation through class hierarchies and virtual methods.

Heterogeneous Collections in C++

Covers heterogeneous collections in C++, including generic treatments and polymorphic behavior using pointers.

Pointers in C++: Event-Driven Programming with GTKmm

Covers function pointers in C++ and their application in GTKmm for event-driven programming.

Abstract Classes: Virtual Methods in C++