1989Unpublished venueRequires access

Multiple Inheritance for C

Bjarne Stroustrup

Open publisher page 97 citations

Abstract

Multiple Inheritance is the ability of a class to have more than one base class (super class). In a language where multiple inheritance is supported a program can be structured as a set of inheritance lattices instead of (just) as a set of inheritance trees. This is widely believed to be an important structuring tool. It is also widely believed that multiple inheritance complicates a programming language significantly, is hard to implement, and is expensive to run. I will demonstrate that none of these last three conjectures are true. 1 Introduction This paper describes an implementation of a multiple inheritance mechanism for C++[4,6.] It provides only the most rudimentary explanation of what multiple inheritance is in general and what it can be used for+. The particular variation of the general concept implemented here is primarily explained in term of this implementation. First a bit of background on multiple inheritance and C++ implementation technique is presented, then th...

About this research paper

What this paper is about

Multiple Inheritance is the ability of a class to have more than one base class (super class). In a language where multiple inheritance is supported a program can be structured as a set of inheritance lattices instead of (just) as a set of inheritance trees. This is widely believed to be an important structuring tool. It is also widely believed that multiple inheritance complicates a programming language significantly, is hard to implement, and is expensive to run. I will demonstrate that none of these last three conjectures are true. 1 Introduction This paper describes an implementation of a multiple inheritance mechanism for C++[4,6.] It provides only the most rudimentary explanation of what multiple inheritance is in general and what it can be used for+. The particular variation of the general concept implemented here is primarily explained in term of this implementation. First a bit of background on multiple inheritance and C++ implementation technique is presented, then th...

Why it matters

OpenAlex reports 97 citations for this work. Citation counts describe recorded attention and do not establish research quality.

Key contribution

A contribution statement is not available in the OpenAlex record.

Method / approach

Method details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Main findings

Findings are not separately available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Limitations

Limitations are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Applications

Application details are not available in the OpenAlex metadata.

Available abstract

Multiple Inheritance is the ability of a class to have more than one base class (super class). In a language where multiple inheritance is supported a program can be structured as a set of inheritance lattices instead of (just) as a set of inheritance trees. This is widely believed to be an important structuring tool. It is also widely believed that multiple inheritance complicates a programming language significantly, is hard to implement, and is expensive to run. I will demonstrate that none of these last three conjectures are true. 1 Introduction This paper describes an implementation of a multiple inheritance mechanism for C++[4,6.] It provides only the most rudimentary explanation of what multiple inheritance is in general and what it can be used for+. The particular variation of the general concept implemented here is primarily explained in term of this implementation. First a bit of background on multiple inheritance and C++ implementation technique is presented, then th...

Key concepts: Inheritance (genetic algorithm), Multiple inheritance, Computer science, Structuring, Class (philosophy), Set (abstract data type), Programming language, Base (topology)

Related papers

Back to paper searchBrowse research topicsOriginal source
Multiple Inheritance for C — Research Paper | ScholarLens