Tutorial by Examples

A class or struct can have member functions as well as member variables. These functions have syntax mostly similar to standalone functions, and can be defined either inside or outside the class definition; if defined outside the class definition, the function's name is prefixed with the class' nam...

A common use of member functions is for encapsulation, using an accessor (commonly known as a getter) and a mutator (commonly known as a setter) instead of accessing fields directly. class Encapsulator { int encapsulated; public: int get_encapsulated() const { return encapsulated; }...

When a base class provides a set of overloaded functions, and a derived class adds another overload to the set, this hides all of the overloads provided by the base class. struct HiddenBase { void f(int) { std::cout << "int" << std::endl; } void f(bool) { std::cout &...

Member functions can also be declared virtual. In this case, if called on a pointer or reference to an instance, they will not be accessed directly; rather, they will look up the function in the virtual function table (a list of pointers-to-member-functions for virtual functions, more commonly know...

One of the primary uses for this cv-qualifiers is const correctness. This is the practice of guaranteeing that only accesses that need to modify an object are able to modify the object, and that any (member or non-member) function that doesn't need to modify an object doesn't have write access to t...